An Overview Of Exocomets

We give a general overview of what the scientific community refers to as “exocomets”.

The general definition of exocomets, as presented in this work, is discussed and compared with Solar System comets and interstellar objects, addressing their detection around main-sequence stars as well as orbiting white dwarfs.

We introduce the different types of exocomet observations, highlighting the difference between exocometary ‘bodies’ and exocometary ‘material’. We provide a census of all exocometary system candidates detected so far, both via spectroscopy and photometry, including detections around white dwarfs.

Daniela Iglesias, Isabel Rebollido, Azib Norazman, Colin Snodgrass, Darryl Z. Seligman, Siyi Xu, H. Jens Hoeijmakers, Matthew Kenworthy, Alain Lecavelier des Etangs, Michele Bannister, Bin Yang

Comments: 49 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables. Accepted to Space Science Reviews
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2511.08270 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2511.08270v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.08270
Focus to learn more
Submission history
From: Daniela Iglesias Dr
[v1] Tue, 11 Nov 2025 14:00:57 UTC (1,295 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.08270
Astrobiology,