white dwarf tagged posts

Astronomers have discovered the first example of a second-generation planet orbiting a white dwarf, a world that appears to have formed from the remains of the dead star it now orbits.

A team of astronomers led by the University of Warwick has identified the first second-generation planet ever found around a white dwarf. While similar “reborn” worlds have been suspected to exist around pulsars, this discovery shows that a second generation of planets can form around this much more common stellar remnant.

First author Jamie Williams, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick, said, “Second-generation planets are worlds that form out of the material a star casts off as it dies...

An international team led by astronomers at the University of Sydney has uncovered the clearest evidence yet for the origin of an unusual class of cosmic signals. In doing so, they have identified a rare stellar system that is providing scientists with a natural laboratory to study extreme physics.

Using CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope, the team discovered a small, dense star, called a white dwarf, shredding material ...

Using NASA’s IXPE, astronomers captured an unprecedented view of a white dwarf star actively feeding on material from a companion. The data revealed giant columns of ultra-hot gas shaped by the star’s magnetic field and glowing in intense X-rays. These features are far too small to image directly, but X-ray polarization allowed scientists to map them with surprising precision. The results open new doors for understanding extreme binary star systems.

Scientists have, for the first time, used N...

University of Warwick astronomers have uncovered the chemical fingerprint of a frozen, water-rich planetary fragment being consumed by a white dwarf star outside our solar system.

In our solar system, it is thought that comets and icy planetesimals (small solid objects in space) were responsible for delivering water to Earth. The existence of these icy objects is a requirement for the development of life on other worlds, but it is incredibly difficult to identify them outside our solar system as icy objects are small, faint and require chemical analysis.

In a study publis...