A Newly Discovered Trail of Cosmic Debris Illustrates How the End of the Solar System Could Look

The white dwarf J1328−1450 is located about 1,600 light-years from Earth. Astronomers were already aware of it thanks to star-mapping catalogs, but new observations taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (yes, that’s its real name) revealed that it is surrounded by a disk of debris with an unusual structure: Two distinct rings of gas separated by a gap.

According to the observatory, this disk of material is likely the remnant of the planetary system that once orbited J1328−1450. As it passed through a red giant phase and subsequently became a white dwarf, the star may have destroyed some of its planets and left other rocky bodies exposed to an extreme environment. Some of the released material ended up forming a disk of gas and dust around the dead star.