Astronomers just found a first-of-its-kind planet

[Mike Wehner]

• Researchers have spotted a planet orbiting a white dwarf star just 80 light-years from Earth.
• White dwarf stars don't typically have planets orbiting them due to the nature of how stars live and die.
• The planet in this case is many times the size of the star itself, making the pair an even odder couple.

There are many different kinds of stars in the cosmos. Some are much larger than others, and some burn brighter and hotter than their peers. Over time, stars enter different stages of their own life cycles, and for many stars, becoming a white dwarf is the end of the line. By this point in a star's life, it has typically destroyed just about everything around it, but researchers just made a discovery that contradicts all of that.

A white dwarf called WD 1856 sits roughly 80 light-years from Earth. That's just a stone's throw in cosmic terms, and when researchers gazed at it they spotted something they didn't expect. It appears as though WD 1856 is being orbited by a massive planet that simply shouldn't be there. A study on the subject was published in the journal Nature.

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Astronomers just found a first-of-its-kind planet originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 17 Sep 2020 at 20:08:46 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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