With help from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in low-Earth orbit, scientists recently observed a Pluto-like object being “eaten” by its host star. Hubble’s unique sensitivity to ultraviolet light allowed it to study the planetary system, which lies around 260 light-years away from Earth.
The hungry star is a white dwarf — the dense, stellar core left behind after a low-mass star dies and blows away its outer layers. The white dwarf observed by Hubble is about the size of Earth but much heavier, at around half the mass of our Sun. The star’s immense density gives it a strong gravitational field that likely pulled the Pluto-like object from a region within the planetary system similar to our Kuiper Belt.