white dwarf tagged posts

Mu Centauri. Credit: Palomar Observatory/STScI/WikiSky

510 light years away, Mu Centauri is a very interesting dwarf nova, a close binary star system in which white dwarf accretes matter from its companion. Although little is know about Mu Centauri, we could observe temporal variations of its brightness and its flickering on a relatively low level. It was also found that this system’s light curve contains odd consistent modulations on 2 different periods.

Bruch used 0.6-m Zeiss and the 0.6-m Boller & Chivens telescopes of Observatorio do Pico dos Dias in Brazil. Photometric observations of its light curves were conducted on 6 nights in Feb, May, Jun 2015. The brightness of Mu Centauri was measured as magnitude difference with respect to several comparison stars in the field...

IMAGE: Artist’s impression of Gaia14aae.
Credit: Marisa Grove/Institute of Astronomy

It is a type of 2-star system known as a Cataclysmic Variable, where one super dense white dwarf star is stealing gas from its companion star, effectively ‘cannibalising’ it.The system could also be an important laboratory for studying ultra-bright supernova explosions, which are a vital tool for measuring the expansion of the Universe. The system, named Gaia14aae, is 730 light years away in Draco constellation. It was discovered by the ESA’s Gaia satellite in August 2014 when it suddenly became 5 times brighter over the course of a single day.

>>Additional observations made by the Center for Backyard Astrophysics (CBA), a collaboration of amateur and professional astronomers, found the system is a rare e...