Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Sirius B, which is a white dwarf, can be seen as a faint point of light to the lower left of the much brighter Sirius A. A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: in an Earth sized volume, it packs a mass that is comparable to the Sun.
A slowly cooling stellar ember called a white dwarf with a scar on its face is providing new insight into the behavior of certain "cannibal" stars at the end of their life cycle. Using the ...
1910 – the spectrum of 40 Eridani B is observed, making it the first confirmed white dwarf. 1914 – Walter Sydney Adams determines an incredibly high density for Sirius B. 1926 – Ralph Fowler uses Fermi–Dirac statistics to explain white dwarf stars. 1930 – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar discovers the white dwarf maximum mass limit.
Representative lifetimes of stars as a function of their masses The change in size with time of a Sun-like star Artist's depiction of the life cycle of a Sun-like star, starting as a main-sequence star at lower left then expanding through the subgiant and giant phases, until its outer envelope is expelled to form a planetary nebula at upper right Chart of stellar evolution
Later in its life, a low-mass star will slowly eject its atmosphere via stellar wind, forming a planetary nebula, while a higher–mass star will eject mass via a sudden catastrophic event called a supernova. The term supernova nucleosynthesis is used to describe the creation of elements during the explosion of a massive star or white dwarf.
About 6% of white dwarfs show infrared excess due to a disk around a white dwarf. [66] In the past only a relative small sample of white dwarf disks was known. [67] Due to advances in white dwarf detection (e.g. with Gaia or LAMOST) and improvement of WISE infrared catalogs with unWISE/CatWISE, the number has increased to hundreds of candidates.
Artist's conception of a white dwarf, right, accreting hydrogen from the Roche lobe of its larger companion star A nova (pl. novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months.
Van Maanen's star is also the nearest solitary white dwarf [5] First white dwarf with a planet WD B1620−26: 2003 PSR B1620-26 b (planet) This planet is a circumbinary planet, which circles both stars in the PSR B1620-26 system [6] [7] First singular white dwarf with a transiting object WD 1145+017: 2015 Known object is a disintegrating ...