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Ultraviolet observations of an ultra-massive white dwarf with the Hubble Space Telescope reveal small amounts of carbon on the surface, identifying it as a merger remnant.

Spectroscopic detection and characterization of an irradiated substellar donor planet in an accreting white-dwarf binary system reveals a donor mass of 0.055 ± 0.008 solar masses, an average spectral type of L1 ± 1 and an average irradiation-induced temperature difference between the dayside and nightside of 57 kelvin.

Photometry and parallax data from the Gaia satellite provide direct observational evidence of a theoretically predicted pile-up in the cooling sequence of white dwarfs, which is associated with core crystallization.

The Zwicky Transient Facility has observed a transitioning white dwarf with two faces, with one side of its atmosphere dominated by hydrogen and the other by helium.

WD 0032–317B is a 75–88-Jupiter mass companion orbiting a hot white dwarf with a period of 2.3 h. It has a day-side temperature of about 8,000 K and a day–night difference of ~6,000 K. WD 0032–317B is amenable to detailed characterization and can be used as a proxy for strongly irradiated ultra-hot giant planets.

A 51-minute-orbital-period, fully eclipsing binary system consisting of a star with a comparable temperature to that of the Sun but a 100 times greater density, accreting onto a white dwarf is reported.

An X-ray source is detected at the expected position of the white dwarf star G29–38, which enables the calculation of the accretion rate of planetary material without using stellar atmosphere models.

Observations of an accretion disk around a hot white dwarf star reveal that the chemical abundances in its disk are similar to those thought to exist deep in icy giant planets, so the white dwarf must be accreting a giant planet.

Detections of lithium (and in one case, potassium) in the atmospheres of four old white dwarfs suggest that they have accreted fragments of planets; specifically, planetary crusts. One white dwarf evolved from an intermediate-mass progenitor, indicating that rocky planets form even around short-lived B-type stars.

The complex evolutionary dance of the strongly magnetic white dwarf in a compact binary system can be effectively modelled by considering spin evolution, core crystallization and a rotation-driven dynamo similar to that in planets and low-mass stars.

LTT 9779 b is Neptune-sized planet rotating around its star with a period of 0.79 days and an equilibrium temperature of 2,000 K. It is not clear how it retained its atmospheric envelope, which contains ~10% of H/He, as it should have been photoevaporated by now.