Astronomers find ‘phoenix planet’ born from ashes of a dying star

A team of astronomers led by the University of Warwick in England has discovered a rare second-generation planet orbiting the ashes of the dead star from which it was born, a smouldering white dwarf.White dwarfs are the collapsed dead cores left behind when stars run out of fuel. They are known to pull in nearby material from planets, which can be detected in their atmosphere. This chemical signature can tell astronomers details about the planets that are in orbit, and the signal is typically dominated by rock-forming elements like silicon and iron.While similar ‘reborn’ worlds have been suspected to exist around pulsars, the latest discovery shows that a second generation of planets can form around a white dwarf.First author Jamie Williams, PhD student in the Department of Physics, University of Warwick said: “Second-generation planets are worlds that form out of the material a star casts off as it dies.