Latest White dwarfs Stories
NASA -- For astronomers, it's always been a source of frustration that the nearest white-dwarf star is buried in the glow of the brightest star in the nighttime sky. This burned-out stellar remnant is a faint companion of the brilliant blue-white Dog Star, Sirius, located in the winter constellation Canis Major.Now, an international team of astronomers has used the keen eye of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to isolate the light from the white dwarf, called Sirius B. The new results allow them...
NASA -- A scientist using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found evidence that two white dwarf stars are orbiting each other in a death grip, destined to merge. The data indicate gravitational waves are carrying energy away from the star system at a prodigious rate, making it a prime candidate for future missions designed to directly detect these ripples in space-time. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity predicted a binary star system should emit gravitational waves that rush away at...
Latest White dwarfs Reference Libraries
Georg Friedrich Julius Arthur von Auwers (September 12, 1838 "“ January 24, 1915) was a German astronomer born in Göttingen, Germany. He attended the University of Göttingen and worked at the University of Königsberg. Auwers specialized in astrometry, making very precise measurements of stellar positions and motions. He detected the companion stars of Sirius and Procyon from their effects on the main star's motion, before telescopes were powerful enough to visually observe them....
Sirius -- Sirius (α Canis Major, also known as the Dog Star) is the brightest star (-1.46m) in the night sky and can be seen from every inhabited region of the Earth's surface. At a distance of 8.6 light years, Sirius is also one of the nearest stars to Earth. It is a main sequence star of spectral type A0 or A1 and has a mass about 2.4 times that of the Sun. Sirius has a white dwarf companion called Sirius B which orbits it with a period close to 50 years. It was the first white...
Procyon -- Procyon (α Canis Minoris) is a brilliant star that receives its name from the fact that it precedes the star Sirius as it travels across the Earth's sky. These two "dog stars" are referred to in the most ancient literature and were venerated by the Babylonians and the Egyptians. Astrologically, Procyon portended wealth, fame, and good fortune. Like Sirius, Procyon has a faint white dwarf companion. It is one of the closest stars to Earth's solar system, being only...
