A citizen scientist taken part in NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 projected found a white Dwarf star while sorting through infrared data.

This white star, an old Earth-sized remnant of a sun-like star that has died, is special because multiple dust rings surround it.

Current models explaining rings around white dwarfs only work well up to 100 million years ago, but the newly discovered white dwarf appeared to be much older. Thus, this new white dwarf, named J0207, challenges current assumptions of how planetary systems evolve.

Read the full story: Arizona State University
Scientific publication: The Astrophysical Journal Letters