Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) have found a rare disc of debris around a dead star that provides a glimpse of what may happen to our Solar System. Unlike in similar systems previously found, the debris — the leftovers of planets that once orbited the star — is organised in a double disc, the two parts separated by a clear gap. The disc appears to be shaped by two planetary bodies, one possibly as big as Pluto, that have survived the violent death of the star.
"We have known for some time that planets may survive beyond the transformation of their central star, but this is the first example of a complex system with a double debris disc and potentially two surviving planetesimals," says Nicola Gentille Fusillo, astronomer at the Università degli Studi di Trieste, Italy, and lead author of the study published this week in Nature Astronomy. The central star of this system is the white dwarf J1328−1450, the dense and burnt-out core left behind when a star similar to our Sun ran out of fuel.
As stars like the Sun enter the final stages of their life, they expand and shed their outer layers, engulfing and destroying nearby planets. The surviving rocky bodies can break apart forming a disc around the central, dead star. However, the disc around J1328−1450 is different from those observed around other dead stars: instead of having only one ring of vaporised planetary rubble, the star is surrounded by two concentric debris rings.
"The structure we see in this system is particularly intriguing because the two gaseous rings are remarkably stable and remain separated by a gap," says co-author Felipe Lagos-Vilches, an astronomer at the University of Warwick, UK and at the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María in Chile. "The system is a rare glimpse of the violent, chaotic process by which a planetary system meets its end, and it hints that dead stars can have disc structures far more complex than previously realised," adds Gentile Fusillo, who is also affiliated with the INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Trieste.
According to the team, this complex double structure is likely maintained by two surviving planet-like bodies, on separate orbits. They estimate that the one in the inner ring is the size of a typical asteroid, a few kilometres in diameter, while the outer one could be as large as Pluto, or even our Moon.
All known debris discs around white dwarfs have been identified by the same observational signature, which indicates the presence of a single, flat, rotating disc. But the new observations, made with the X-Shooter instrument on ESO's VLT in Chile's Atacama Desert, show that the J1328−1450 system breaks this pattern completely, revealing instead the unique fingerprint of a double disc .
The observations also reveal that elements such as calcium, oxygen, magnesium and iron are present in the disc, indicating a composition similar to that of rocky planetary material found in our own Solar System. Moreover, the data indicate that the two rings in the disc in fact have rather different compositions, with the inner ring rich in magnesium gas and the outer largely stripped of it. This suggests that the planetesimals that feed the rings originated from two planets with different compositions. An alternative explanation is that they are the result of different parts of a celestial body, like the crust and core of a planet.
Our Solar System could meet a similar end, as our Sun will, in a far future, become a white dwarf in a process that may destroy Earth. "The system therefore offers a remarkable glimpse of what the future of planetary systems, including systems like our own, might look like," concludes Lagos-Vilches.
More information
This research was presented in a paper published in Nature Astronomy (doi: 10.1038/s41550-026-03004-3 ).
The team is composed of Nicola Pietro Gentile Fusillo (Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita' di Trieste and INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Italy), Felipe Lagos-Vilches (Department of Physics, University of Warwick, UK and Departamento de Física, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Chile), Boris T. Gänsicke (Department of Physics and Centre for Exoplanets and Habitability, University of Warwick, UK), Christopher J. Manser (Department of Physics, Astrophysics Group, Imperial College London, UK), Detlev Koester (Institut für Theoretische Physik und Astrophysik, University of Kiel, Germany).
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration for astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO's headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as survey telescopes such as VISTA. Also at Paranal, ESO will host and operate the south array of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory, the world's largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates ALMA on Chajnantor, a facility that observes the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building "the world's biggest eye on the sky" — ESO's Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chilean partners and society.
