A new study puts an age to a faint white dwarf star of over ten billion years Engulfed remains of recently orbiting planetesimals make this the oldest dead star with an evolved planetary system Provides insight into the formation and evolution of asteroids, icy moons, and Earth-like rocky plan
involves analyzing the light from the star at different wavelengths. This can detect when elements in the star’s atmosphere are absorbing light at different colors and helps determine what elements those are and how much is present. By analyzing the spectrum from WDJ2147-4035, the team found the presence of the metals sodium, lithium, and potassium and tentatively detected carbon accreting onto the star – making this the oldest metal-polluted white dwarf discovered so far.
The debris found in the otherwise nearly pure-helium and high-gravity atmosphere of the red star WDJ2147-4035 are from an old planetary system that survived the evolution of the star into a white dwarf, leading the astronomers to conclude that this is the oldest planetary system around a white dwarf discovered in the Milky Way.
Astronomers can also use the star’s spectra to determine how quickly those metals are sinking into the star’s core, which allows them to look back in time and determine how abundant each of those metals was in the original planetary body.
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