We report the discovery of BD+05 4868 Ab, a transiting exoplanet orbiting a bright (V = 10.16) K-dwarf (TIC 466376085) with a period of 1.27 days. Observations from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite reveal variable transit depths and asymmetric transit profiles that are characteristic of comet-like tails formed by dusty effluents emanating from a disintegrating planet. Unique to BD+05 4868 Ab is the presence of prominent dust tails in both the trailing and leading directions that contribute to the extinction of starlight from the host star. By fitting the observed transit profile and analytically modeling the drift of dust grains within both dust tails, we infer large grain sizes (∼1–10 μm) and a mass-loss rate of 10 M⊕ Gyr−1, suggestive of a lunar-mass object with a disintegration timescale of only several Myr. The host star is probably older than the Sun and is accompanied by an M-dwarf companion at a projected physical separation of 130 au. The brightness of the host star, combined with the planet’s relatively deep transits (0.8%–2.0%), presents BD+05 4868 Ab as a prime target for compositional studies of rocky exoplanets and investigations into the nature of catastrophically evaporating planets.
A Disintegrating Rocky Planet with Prominent Comet-like Tails around a Bright Star
Creators
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Hon, Marc1
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Rappaport, Saul1
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Shporer, Avi1
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Vanderburg, Andrew1
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Collins, Karen A.2
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Watkins, Cristilyn N.2
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Schwarz, Richard P.2
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Barkaoui, Khalid3, 1, 4
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Yee, Samuel W.2, 5
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Winn, Joshua N.5
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Polanski, Alex S.6, 7
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Gilbert, Emily A.8
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Ciardi, David R.9
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Audenaert, Jeroen1
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Fong, William1
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Haviland, Jack1
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Hesse, Katharine1
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Muthukrishna, Daniel1
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Petitpas, Glen1
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Schmelzer, Ellie Hadjiyska1
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Narita, Norio4, 10
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Fukui, Akihiko4, 10
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Seager, Sara1
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Ricker, George R.1
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1.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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2.
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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3.
University of Liège
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4.
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
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5.
Princeton University
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6.
Lowell Observatory
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7.
University of Kansas
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8.
Jet Propulsion Lab
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9.
California Institute of Technology
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10.
University of Tokyo
Abstract
Copyright and License
© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Acknowledgement
Funding for the TESS mission is provided by the NASA Explorer Program. We acknowledge the use of public TESS data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office. This Letter includes data collected by the TESS mission that are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). M.H. acknowledges support from NASA grant 80NSSC24K0228. K.A.C. and C.N.W. acknowledge support from the TESS mission via subaward s3449 from MIT. The postdoctoral fellowship of K.B. is funded by F.R.S.-FNRS grant T.0109.20 and by the Francqui Foundation. D.R.C. acknowledges partial support from NASA grant 18-2XRP18_2-0007. This work is partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant No. JP24H00017 and JSPS Bilateral Program No. JPJSBP120249910. This research was carried out in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). This work makes use of observations from the LCOGT network. Part of the LCOGT telescope time was granted by NOIRLab through the Mid-Scale Innovations Program (MSIP). MSIP is funded by NSF. This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program (ExoFOP; NExScI 2022) website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. This Letter is also based on observations made with the MuSCAT instruments, developed by the Astrobiology Center (ABC) in Japan, the University of Tokyo, and Las Cumbres Observatory (LCOGT). MuSCAT3 was developed with financial support by JSPS KAKENHI (JP18H05439) and JST PRESTO (JPMJPR1775), and is located at the Faulkes Telescope North in Maui, HI (USA), operated by LCOGT. MuSCAT4 was developed with financial support provided by the Heising-Simons Foundation (grant 2022-3611), JST grant No. JPMJCR1761, and the ABC in Japan, and is located at the Faulkes Telescope South at Siding Spring Observatory (Australia), operated by LCOGT. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at Keck Observatory, which is a private 501(c)3 nonprofit organization operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the Native Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain.
Facilities
TESS - , LCOGT - Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope.
Software References
AstroImageJ (K. A. Collins et al. 2017), TAPIR (E. Jensen 2013), Dynesty (J. S. Speagle 2020).
Files
Hon_2025_ApJL_984_L3.pdf
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Additional details
Related works
- Is new version of
- Discussion Paper: arXiv:2501.05431 (arXiv)
Funding
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NSSC24K0228
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- s3449
- Fonds De La Recherche Scientifique - FNRS
- T.0109.20
- Fondation Francqui
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 18-2XRP18_2-0007
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- JP24H00017
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- JPJSBP120249910
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NM0018D0004
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- JP18H05439
- Japan Science and Technology Agency
- JPMJPR1775
- Heising-Simons Foundation
- 2022-3611
- Japan Science and Technology Agency
- JPMJCR1761
- W. M. Keck Foundation
Dates
- Accepted
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2025-03-09
- Available
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2025-04-22Published