Watch EarthSky’s founder Deborah Byrd interview Marc Hon of MIT, the lead author of the new study.
- Astronomers have discovered a planet that’s rapidly disintegrating, producing a comet-like tail.
- The small and rocky lava world sheds an amount of material equivalent to the mass of Mount Everest every 30.5 hours.
- The long tail stretches some 9 million kilometers long, or roughly half of the planet’s entire orbit.
MIT published this original article on April 22, 2025. Edits by EarthSky.
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Astronomers discover a disintegrating planet
MIT astronomers have discovered a planet some 140 light-years from Earth that is rapidly crumbling to pieces.
The disintegrating world is about the mass of Mercury, although it circles about 20 times closer to its star than Mercury does to the sun, completing an orbit every 30.5 hours. At such close proximity to its star, the planet is likely covered in magma that is boiling off into space. As the roasting planet whizzes around its star, it is shedding an enormous amount of surface minerals and effectively evaporating away.
The astronomers spotted the planet using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an MIT-led mission that monitors the nearest stars for transits, or periodic dips in starlight that could be signs of orbiting exoplanets. The signal that tipped the astronomers off was a peculiar transit, with a dip that fluctuated in depth every orbit.
The scientists confirmed that the signal is of a tightly orbiting rocky planet that is trailing a long, comet-like tail of debris.
A doomed planet
Marc Hon, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, said:
The extent of the tail is gargantuan, stretching up to 9 million kilometers long, or roughly half of the planet’s entire orbit.
It appears that the planet is disintegrating at a dramatic rate. It’s shedding an amount of material equivalent to one Mount Everest each time it orbits its star. At this pace, given its small mass, the researchers predict the planet may completely disintegrate in about 1 million to 2 million years.
Avi Shporer, a collaborator on the discovery who is also at the TESS Science Office, said:
We got lucky with catching it exactly when it’s really going away. It’s like on its last breath.
Hon and Shporer, along with their colleagues, published their results on April 22, 2025, in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Roasting away
The new planet, which scientists have tagged as BD+05 4868 Ab, was detected almost by happenstance. Hon said:
We weren’t looking for this kind of planet. We were doing the typical planet vetting, and I happened to spot this signal that appeared very unusual.
The typical signal of an orbiting exoplanet looks like a brief dip in a light curve, which repeats regularly. This indicates that a compact body such as a planet is briefly passing in front of, and temporarily blocking, the light from its host star.
This typical pattern was unlike what Hon and his colleagues detected from the host star BD+05 4868 A, located in the constellation of Pegasus. Though a transit appeared every 30.5 hours, the brightness took much longer to return to normal. This suggested a long trailing structure still blocking starlight. Even more intriguing, the depth of the dip changed with each orbit. So whatever was passing in front of the star wasn’t always the same shape or blocking the same amount of light.
Hon explained:
The shape of the transit is typical of a comet with a long tail. Except that it’s unlikely that this tail contains volatile gases and ice as expected from a real comet. These would not survive long at such close proximity to the host star. Mineral grains evaporated from the planetary surface, however, can linger long enough to present such a distinctive tail.
Taking the temp of the disintegrating planet
Given its proximity to its star, the team estimated the planet is roasting at around 1,600 degrees Celsius, or close to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. As the star roasts the planet, any minerals on its surface are likely boiling away and escaping into space, where they cool and form a long and dusty tail.
The dramatic demise of this planet is a consequence of its low mass, which is between that of Mercury and the moon. More massive terrestrial planets like the Earth have a stronger gravitational pull and therefore can hold onto their atmospheres. For BD+05 4868 Ab, the researchers suspect there is very little gravity to hold the planet together. Shporer explained:
This is a very tiny object, with very weak gravity, so it easily loses a lot of mass, which then further weakens its gravity, so it loses even more mass. It’s a runaway process, and it’s only getting worse and worse for the planet.
A mineral trail for the disintegrating planet
Of the nearly 6,000 planets that astronomers have discovered to date, scientists know of only three other disintegrating planets beyond our solar system. Astronomers spotted each of these crumbling worlds over 10 years ago using data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. All three planets had similar comet-like tails. BD+05 4868 Ab has the longest tail and the deepest transits out of the four known disintegrating planets to date. Hon explained:
That implies that its evaporation is the most catastrophic, and it will disappear much faster than the other planets.
The planet’s host star is relatively close. Thus it’s brighter than the stars hosting the other three disintegrating planets. That makes this system ideal for further observations using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Webb can help determine the mineral makeup of the dust tail by identifying which colors of infrared light it absorbs.
Future observations
This summer, Hon and graduate student Nicholas Tusay from Penn State University will lead observations of BD+05 4868 Ab using Webb. Hon said:
This will be a unique opportunity to directly measure the interior composition of a rocky planet, which may tell us a lot about the diversity and potential habitability of terrestrial planets outside our solar system.
The researchers also will look through TESS data for signs of other disintegrating worlds. Shporer said:
Sometimes with the food comes the appetite, and we are now trying to initiate the search for exactly these kinds of objects. These are weird objects, and the shape of the signal changes over time, which is something that’s difficult for us to find. But it’s something we’re actively working on.
Bottom line: Astronomers have discovered a disintegrating planet. It’s being roasted by the giant sun it orbits, leaving a long tail behind in its orbit.
Source: A Disintegrating Rocky Planet with Prominent Comet-like Tails Around a Bright Star
Via MIT
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