V. J. S. Béjar

When a star like the Sun ages, it swells and sheds its outer layers. What remains is a small, dense white dwarf — the former core. Around it, planetary debris can remain: rocks, dust, even whole asteroids. They orbit like a carousel that's been taken apart, but the pieces are still spinning. Astronomers watched the white dwarf WD 1054-226 for six years.

A streetlamp flickers as someone walks past. That's roughly how our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, behaves: it flares in response to the motion of its planets. Astronomers observed the star with a highly sensitive instrument, the ESPRESSO spectrograph. It captures light and splits it into colors, much like a prism.