A Jupiter-size planet that escaped its star's death

One Place News — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 12:37:09 +0000

WD 1856 b is the only confirmed case of a planet that survived the death of a Sun-like star. It’s a Jupiter-size world orbiting a white dwarf—the burned-out remnant of a Sun-like star. Now, a team of astronomers has used the James Webb Space Telescope to take a closer look at this planet for the first time, and what they found makes an already strange system even stranger.

A feeding frenzy

WD 1856 b was an accidental discovery. Astronomers pointed the TESS observatory at a sample of roughly 2,000 white dwarfs in 2020. These stars are the remains of a Sun-like star that have already gone through a red-giant phase, leaving behind an Earth-size body that’s primarily composed of elements like carbon and oxygen. The TESS team was searching for small objects like comets or asteroids that might transit across the face of these dead stars.

What they found in the WD 1856 system was a gas giant. “As soon as they looked at it, they said, okay, that’s weird,” said Christopher O’Connor, a theoretical astrophysicist at Cornell University and co-author of the recent Nature study on WD 1856 b.

Read full article

Comments

'We escaped Spanish wildfire, but our friends lost their lives'

One Place News — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 12:36:42 +0000

Hundreds of firefighters in Spain have been battling a deadly wildfire in the south of the country.

Escaped – One Place News – Breaking News – Local News – News today

A Jupiter-size planet that escaped its star's death

A feeding frenzy

'We escaped Spanish wildfire, but our friends lost their lives'