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A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to Earth's. No nuclear fusion takes place in a white dwarf. Instead, the light it radiates comes from the residual heat stored in it. [1] The nearest known white dwarf is Sirius B, at 8.6 light years, the smaller component of the Sirius binary star.
Sirius is a binary star consisting of a main-sequence star of spectral type A0 or A1, termed Sirius A, and a faint white dwarf companion of spectral type DA2, termed Sirius B. The distance between the two varies between 8.2 and 31.5 astronomical units as they orbit every 50 years. [25]
Sirius B: 1852 Sirius system Sirius B is also the nearest white dwarf (as of 2005) [1] [2] First found in a binary star system First double white dwarf system LDS 275: 1944 L 462-56 system [3] First solitary white dwarf Van Maanen 2: 1917 Van Maanen's star is also the nearest solitary white dwarf [4] First white dwarf with a planet WD B1620− ...
The brightest, most massive and most luminous object among those 131 is Sirius A, which is also the brightest star in Earth's night sky; its white dwarf companion Sirius B is the hottest object among them. The largest object within the 20 light-years is Procyon.
Nearest white dwarf: Sirius B: 1852 8.6 light-years (2.6 pc) Sirius B is also the second white dwarf discovered, after 40 Eridani B. [9] [25] [26] Nearest brown dwarf: Luhman 16: 2013 6.5 light-years (2.0 pc) This is a pair of brown dwarfs in a binary system, with no other stars. [27] Nearest Luminous Blue Variable: P Cygni: 5,251 light-years ...
Its name comes from the Greek word for "scorching" or "searing". Sirius is also a binary star; its companion Sirius B is a white dwarf with a magnitude of 8.4–10,000 times fainter than Sirius A to observers on Earth. [32] The two orbit each other every 50 years. Their closest approach last occurred in 1993 and they will be at their greatest ...
The revised Yerkes Atlas system [7] listed a dense grid of A-type dwarf spectral standard stars, but not all of these have survived to this day as standards. The "anchor points" and "dagger standards" of the MK spectral classification system among the A-type main-sequence dwarf stars, i.e. those standard stars that have remained unchanged over years and can be considered to define the system ...
Alvan Graham Clark was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, the son of Alvan Clark, founder of Alvan Clark & Sons. [1]On January 31, 1862, while testing a new 18.5-inch (470 mm) aperture great refractor telescope in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, Clark made the first ever observation of a white dwarf star.