Artist's concept of the comet-like tail of a possible disintegrating super Mercury-size planet candidate as it transits its parent star named KIC 12557548. At an orbital distance of only twice the diameter of its star, the surface temperature of the potential planet is estimated to be a sweltering 3,300 degrees Fahrenheit. At such a high temperature, the surface would melt and evaporate. The energy from the resulting wind would be enough to allow dust and gas to escape into space creating a trailing dusty effluence that intermittently blocks the starlight. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

• NASA Feature Story: NASA’s Kepler Detects Potential Evaporating Planet Candidate
• MIT Press Release

"The bizarre nature of the light output from this star with its precisely periodic transit-like features and highly variable depths exemplifies how Kepler is expanding the frontiers of science in unexpected ways," said Jon Jenkins, Kepler co-investigator at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. "This discovery pulls back the curtain of how science works in the face of surprising data."

Astrophysical Journal article (by S. Rappaport et al) abstract excerpt: We report here on the discovery of stellar occultations, observed with Kepler, that recur periodically at 15.685 hour intervals, but which vary in depth from a maximum of 1.3% to a minimum that can be less than 0.2%. ... they cannot be due solely to transits of a single planet with a fixed size. ...We come down in favor of an explanation that involves macroscopic particles escaping the atmosphere of a slowly disintegrating planet not much larger than Mercury. ...The occultation profile ...could reflect a comet-like dust tail trailing the planet; we present simulations of such a tail.

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