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A crumbling exoplanet spills its guts

Astronomers have determined the internal composition of a distant planet for the first time

A bright yellow orb of an exoplanet with a dark shadowy streak running almost all the way across it

Disintegrating exoplanets, like the one illustrated here, spill their guts into space in a long cometlike tail.

JPL-Caltech/NASA

By Lisa Grossman

Read another version of this article at Science News Explores

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD. — For the first time, astronomers have taken a direct look at an exoplanet’s insides.

An exoplanet about 800 light-years away is spilling its guts into space, and new observations with the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, have let astronomers read the entrails, astronomers report this week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.