images

Asteroid collapsed by tidal force - Artist view

by

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Novapix

Reference

a-ast99-91010

Date

2009-01-06

This artist's concept illustrates a dead star, or "white dwarf," surrounded by the bits and pieces of a disintegrating asteroid. Asteroids are leftover scraps of planetary material. They form early on in a star's history when planets are forming out of collisions between rocky bodies. When a star like our sun dies, shrinking down to a skeleton of its former self called a white dwarf, its asteroids get jostled about. If one of these asteroids gets too close to the white dwarf, the white dwarf's gravity will chew the asteroid up, leaving a cloud of dust.