Surveying the aftermath of a colossal planetary smash-up
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope first detected the remnants of a catastrophic collision involving two distant rocky exoplanets in a planetary system called BD +20 307, but SOFIA provided a glimpse into the aftermath. Using FORCAST (Faint Object Infrared Camera for the SOFIA Telescope), the observatory showed that the brightness of the debris cloud had increased by more than 10% less than a decade later. Astronomers struggled to explain why the dust began to glow more brightly, saying more observations are needed.
