NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered comets plunging onto the star HD 172555, which is a youthful 23 million years old and resides 95 light-years from Earth.
The exocomets — comets outside our solar system — were not directly seen around the star, but their presence was inferred by detecting gas that is likely the vaporized remnants of their icy nuclei.
HD 172555 represents the third extrasolar system where astronomers have detected doomed, wayward comets. All of the systems are young, under 40 million years old.
The presence of these doomed comets provides circumstantial evidence for “gravitational stirring” by an unseen Jupiter-size planet, where comets deflected by its gravity are catapulted into the star. These events also provide new insights into the past and present activity of comets in our solar system. It’s a mechanism where infalling comets could have transported water to Earth and the other inner planets of our solar system.
Astronomers have found similar plunges in our own solar system. Sun-grazing comets routinely fall into our sun. Seeing these sun-grazing comets in our solar system and in three extrasolar systems means that this activity may be common in young star systems.
The star is part of the Beta Pictoris Moving Group, a collection of stars born from the same stellar nursery. It is the second group member found to harbor such comets. Beta Pictoris, the group’s namesake, also is feasting on exocomets travelling too close. A young gas-giant planet has been observed in that star’s vast debris disk.
The stellar group is important to study because it is the closest collection of young stars to Earth. At least 37.5 percent of the more massive stars in the Beta Pictoris Moving Group either have a directly imaged planet, such as 51 Eridani b in the 51 Eridani system, or infalling star-grazing bodies, or, in the case of Beta Pictoris, both types of objects.
