The star—named WD 0816-310—is a white dwarf star situated around 63 light years away and was spotted with a bizarre scar stretching across its surface by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), according to a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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," study lead author Stefano Bagnulo, an astronomer at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium in Northern Ireland, said in a statement.
This white dwarf, WD 0816-310, is thought to have consumed a small planet or planetary fragment around the same size as one of the largest asteroids in our solar system.
“We have demonstrated that these metals originate from a planetary fragment as large as or possibly larger than Vesta, which is about 500 kilometres [310 miles] across and the second-largest asteroid in the Solar System,” study co-author Jay Farihi, a professor at University College London, said in the statement.
Instead, this scar is a concentrated patch of planetary material, held in place by the same magnetic field that has guided the infalling fragments," co-author John Landstreet, a professor at Western University, Canada, who is also affiliated with the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, said in the statement.
“ESO has the unique combination of capabilities needed to observe faint objects such as white dwarfs, and sensitively measure stellar magnetic fields,” Bagnulo said.
The original article contains 638 words, the summary contains 238 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The star—named WD 0816-310—is a white dwarf star situated around 63 light years away and was spotted with a bizarre scar stretching across its surface by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), according to a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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," study lead author Stefano Bagnulo, an astronomer at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium in Northern Ireland, said in a statement.
This white dwarf, WD 0816-310, is thought to have consumed a small planet or planetary fragment around the same size as one of the largest asteroids in our solar system.
“We have demonstrated that these metals originate from a planetary fragment as large as or possibly larger than Vesta, which is about 500 kilometres [310 miles] across and the second-largest asteroid in the Solar System,” study co-author Jay Farihi, a professor at University College London, said in the statement.
Instead, this scar is a concentrated patch of planetary material, held in place by the same magnetic field that has guided the infalling fragments," co-author John Landstreet, a professor at Western University, Canada, who is also affiliated with the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, said in the statement.
“ESO has the unique combination of capabilities needed to observe faint objects such as white dwarfs, and sensitively measure stellar magnetic fields,” Bagnulo said.
The original article contains 638 words, the summary contains 238 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!