A team of researchers using archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope, a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), as well as other NASA observatories have observed a white dwarf consuming and destroying a planetary system — the first time an observation of such kind has been made.
The white dwarf, a star leftover from another star that has stopped nuclear fusion and shed its outer layers, is consuming the system by pulling in both rocky-metallic and icy material from the outer and inner reaches of its planetary system.