Transiting Disintegrating Planetary Debris Around WD 1145+017

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Abstract

More than a decade after astronomers realized that disrupted planetary material likely pollutes the surfaces of many white dwarf stars, the discovery of transiting debris orbiting the white dwarf WD 1145+017 has opened the door to new explorations of this process. We describe the observational evidence for transiting planetary material and the current theoretical understanding (and in some cases lack thereof) of the phenomenon.

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Notes

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Bruce Gary, Siyi Xu, and Zach Berta-Thompson for their quite helpful discussions and for sharing some of their unpublished results regarding WD 1145+017. We also acknowledge Ben Zuckerman for his insightful comments about the manuscript.

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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Harvard-Smithsonian Center for AstrophysicsCambridgeUSA
  2. 2.Department of PhysicsMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyCambridgeUSA

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