NASA’s Hubble Telescope spots white dwarf consuming Pluto

NASA says its Hubble Space Telescope has captured evidence of a white dwarf star consuming the remnants of a Pluto-like object - a scenario that may predict what will happen to planets in our own solar system in the distant future.

By using Hubble’s ultraviolet capabilities, astronomers say they were able to detect nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur and carbon in the remnants, located about 260 light-years away from Earth.

White dwarfs are the dense, burned-out cores left behind after giant stars exhaust their nuclear fuel.

This particular white dwarf, named WD 1647+375, is estimated to contain about half the Sun ’s mass and is compressed into roughly the size of Earth.

"We were surprised," Snehalata Sahu of the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "We did not expec