WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have observed a white dwarf – a highly compact stellar ember – that appears to have gobbled up an icy world akin to the dwarf planet Pluto, a finding with implications regarding the likelihood of habitable planets beyond our solar system.

The white dwarf is located in our Milky Way galaxy about 255 light-years from Earth, relatively close in cosmic terms, and has a mass about 57% that of the sun. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

White dwarfs are among the universe’s most compact objects, though not as dense as black holes. Stars with up to eight times the mass of the sun appear destined to end up as a white dwarf. They eventually burn up all the hydrogen they use

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