white dwarf tagged posts

This artist’s impression shows the strange object AR Scorpii. In this unique double star a rapidly spinning white dwarf star (right) powers electrons up to almost the speed of light. These high energy particles release blasts of radiation that lash the companion red dwarf star (left) and cause the entire system to pulse dramatically every 1.97 minutes with radiation ranging from the ultraviolet to radio. Credit: M. Garlick/University of Warwick, ESA/Hubble

Astronomers using Hubble along with other telescopes on the ground and in space, have discovered a new type of exotic binary star: in the system AR Scorpii a rapidly spinning white dwarf star is powering electrons up to almost the speed of light...

White dwarf (right) stripping mass from the brown dwarf. Credit: Rene Breton, University of Manchester.

Astronomers have detected a sub-stellar object that used to be a star, after being consumed by its white dwarf companion. An international team of astronomers made the discovery by observing a very faint binary system, J1433 730 light-years away. The system consists of a low-mass object – 60X the mass of Jupiter – in an extremely tight 78-min orbit around a white dwarf (the remnant of a star like our Sun).

Due to their close proximity, the white dwarf strips mass from its low-mass companion. This process has removed about 90% of the mass of the companion, turning it from a star into a brown dwarf...

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...