Evidence for Gas from a Disintegrating Extrasolar Asteroid

S. Xu (1), M. Jura (2), P. Dufour (3), B. Zuckerman (2) ((1) ESO (2) UCLA (3) University of Montreal)
(Submitted on 18 Nov 2015)

We report high-resolution spectroscopic observations of WD 1145+017 — a white dwarf that recently has been found to be transitted by multiple asteroid-sized objects within its tidal radius. We have discovered numerous circumstellar absorption lines with linewidths of 300 km s1 from Mg, Ca, Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe and Ni, possibly from several gas streams produced by collisions among the actively disintegrating objects. The atmosphere of WD 1145+017 is polluted with 11 heavy elements, including O, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Ti, V:, Cr, Mn, Fe and Ni. Evidently, we are witnessing the active disintegration and subsequent accretion of an extrasolar asteroid.

Comments: ApJ Letters, accepted
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:1511.05973 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1511.05973v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Siyi Xu
[v1] Wed, 18 Nov 2015 21:00:43 GMT (234kb,D)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.05973