Artist’s impression of star and planetary fragments
Artist's impression of star and planetary fragments The unique signature of a star ingesting its surrounding planets and asteroids - a metal scar imprinted on the surface of a white dwarf star - has been found for the first time by a team including UCL researchers. White dwarfs are glowing embers of stars that have burned through all their hydrogen fuel. Nearly all stars, including the Sun, will eventually become white dwarfs. For the new study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the research team used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) in Chile to observe a concentration of metals imprinted on the surface of the white dwarf WD 0816'310 , an Earth-sized remnant of a star somewhat more massive than the Sun. They concluded that the star's magnetic field funnelled metals on to its surface, creating the scar, a feature never seen before on a white dwarf star. Lead author Dr Stefano Bagnulo (Honorary, Mullard Space Science Laboratory at UCL, and Armagh Observatory and Planetarium in Northern Ireland), said: " It is well known that some white dwarfs are cannibalising pieces of their planetary systems. Now we have discovered that the star's magnetic field plays a key role in this process, resulting in a scar on the white dwarf's surface.
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