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    Hubble directly measures Mass of a Lone White Dwarf

    February 7, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Black background with stars. Image center: blue-white star (LAWD 37) surrounded by horizontal rectangle that indicates the area highlighted in an inset box. Inset box illustrates the path of LAWD 37 and the position of the background star relative to it.
    This graphic shows how microlensing was used to measure the mass of a white dwarf star. The dwarf, called LAWD 37, is a burned-out star in the center of this Hubble Space Telescope image. Though its nuclear fusion furnace has shut down, trapped heat is sizzling on the surface at 180,000 degrees Fahrenheit, causing the stellar remnant to glow fiercely. The inset box plots how the dwarf passed in front of a background star in 2019. The wavy blue line traces the dwarf’s apparent motion across the sky as seen from Earth. Though the dwarf is following a straight trajectory, the motion of Earth orbiting the Sun imparts an apparent sinusoidal offset due to parallax. (The star is only 15 light-years away. Therefore, it is moving at a faster rate against the stellar background...
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