Suspected Second-generation Planet Solves NASA Hubble Cold Case

Diligent sleuthing by astronomers has broken open a cold case in the data archive of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope . In a study published Monday in Nature Astronomy, researchers report uncovering a surprising chemical clue that indicates the white dwarf star HS 0209+0832 may host a second-generation planet.
A white dwarf is the remnant core of a low-mass star that has burned through all its nuclear fuel and lost its outer envelope of gas and dust to space. A second-generation planet is a world that forms around the stellar remnant from its cast-off material.
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