An international team of researchers, including staff from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered a planetary nebula that des

The IAC discovers a planetary nebula that destroyed its solar system | Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias • IAC

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2025-01-10 16:00:04

An international team of researchers, including staff from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered a planetary nebula that destroyed its own planetary system, conserving the remaining fragments in the form of dust orbiting its central star.

To date, more than 5000 exoplanets have been discovered orbiting stars of all kinds and almost every stage of stellar evolution. However, while exoplanets have been discovered around white dwarfs – the final stage in the evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars like the Sun, no exoplanets have been detected in the previous evolutionary phase, known as the planetary nebula phase.

Planetary nebulae are glowing shells of gas and dust that are found around the youngest white dwarfs, formed from the material lost by the central star at the end of its life just before becoming a white dwarf. The expulsion of this material interferes with any planets that might be in orbit around the star, causing the closest to spiral-in and be engulfed by the central star while the most distant move to even more distant orbits, perhaps even becoming unbound and flying away.

The apparent absence of any exoplanets around stars in the planetary nebula phase raises important questions about how so many can be found around white dwarfs. This discovery, published in Nature Astronomy and in which the IAC participated, represents an important step towards understanding the observed population of exoplanets around evolved stars.