Using the repurposed Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered evidence of a tiny, rocky object…
Browsing: White Dwarf
A white dwarf is a small, dense stellar remnant left after a star like our Sun has exhausted most of its nuclear fuel and expelled its outer layers. Typically about the size of Earth but containing the mass of about half to 1.4 times that of the Sun, white dwarfs represent the final evolutionary state of stars that do not have sufficient mass to continue nuclear fusion into heavier elements, a fate shared by over 97% of the stars in the Milky Way. These stellar remnants are incredibly dense, with their material compressed to a quantum state known as electron degenerate matter. White dwarfs no longer undergo fusion reactions, so they do not generate new energy; instead, they emit only residual thermal energy, slowly cooling over billions of years. The ultimate fate of a white dwarf is to cool and dim, eventually becoming a black dwarf — a theoretical endpoint when it no longer emits significant heat or light.
Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have…
Using Kepler data, a team of astronomers has observed a white dwarf star displaying massive…
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has detected excess infrared light around white dwarf PG 0010+280. Scientists…
By combining data from Chandra and several other telescopes, researchers think they have discovered the…
A newly published study reveals that supernova remnant 3C 397 is the remains of a…
New research shows without a doubt that white dwarf stars can reignite and explode as…
Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have detected a pair of white dwarf stars…
A new study from astrophysicists at the University of Warwick reveals that calcium-rich supernovae are…
Using the Green Bank Telescope, Very Long Baseline Array, and other observatories, astronomers have identified…
An international team of astronomers has solved a decades old space mystery, revealing a new…
Astronomers have reconstructed the short-lived nova explosion from white dwarf MAXI J0158−744, revealing for the…
Using the Green Bank Telescope, astronomers have discovered a triple star system with two white…
Astronomers used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton telescope present optical and X-ray…
Using the Hubble Space Telescope and the large telescopes of the W. M. Keck Observatory,…
The Hubble Space Telescope has detected signs of Earth-like planets in debris whirling around two…
Observations of a newly discovered pulsar and its white dwarf companion, orbiting each other once…
In a new study, researchers suggest that white dwarfs can still support habitable planets, demonstrating…