SDSS tagged posts

Image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey of the blue oxygen atmosphere white dwarf SDSS J124043.01+671034.68.

Researchers have discovered a white dwarf star with an atmosphere dominated by oxygen, a type of white dwarf that has been theorized to exist but not identified to date. The finding could challenge the textbook wisdom of single stellar evolution, and provide a critical link to some types of supernovae discovered over the past decade.

As relatively small stars (those <10X the mass of our sun) near the end of their lives, they throw off their outer layers and become white dwarf stars, which are very dense. The high gravity that occurs under such density causes the lighter elements, such as hydrogen or helium, to float to the surface of the star, masking the heavier elements below.

Whi...

The Celeste graphical model. Shaded vertices represent observed random variables. Empty vertices represent latent ran- dom variables. Black dots represent constants. Constants denoted by uppercase Greek characters are fixed and denote parameters of prior distributions. The remaining constants and all latent random variables are inferred.

Berkeley Lab-based research collaboration of astrophysicists, statisticians and computer scientists is looking to shake things up with Celeste, a new statistical analysis model designed to enhance one of modern astronomy’s most time-tested tools: sky surveys...