At such close proximity to its star, the planet is likely covered in magma boiling off into space. As the roasting planet whizzes around its star, it is shedding an enormous amount of surface minerals and effectively evaporating away, leaving a debris tail behind it.

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Astronomers have spotted a small rocky planet that orbits perilously close to its host star disintegrating as its surface is vaporized by stellar heat, trailed by a comet-like tail of mineral dust up to about 5.

MIT astronomers have discovered a planet some 140 light-years from Earth that is rapidly crumbling to pieces. The disintegrating world is about the mass of Mercury, although it circles about 20 times