white dwarfs

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Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: white dwarfs

Eclipsing binary white dwarfs, weird mergers, and peculiar supernovae

Phil Plait

Feb 9, 2021

Sgr A East (the blue glow to the left showing X-rays) is debris expanding away from an unusual kind of supernova called a Type Iax, when two white dwarfs merge and explode.

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: white dwarfs

Tag: apocalypse

Physicist predicts the 'mindboggling' number of years before the universe ends

Jeff Spry

Aug 17, 2020

Tag: apocalypse

Tag: white dwarfs

Gargantuan objects in space fall just like Einstein predicted they would - even pulsars

Elizabeth Rayne

Jun 12, 2020

Tag: white dwarfs

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: white dwarfs

Got lithium? Thank a long-gone explodey white dwarf

Phil Plait

Jun 2, 2020

Artist's drawing of the RS Ophiuchi system, a recurring nova, where a white dwarf is accumulating matter from a star orbiting it. Credit: David Hardy & PPARC

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: white dwarfs

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: neutron stars

A dead star's spin is dragging the fabric of spacetime along with it

Phil Plait

Feb 4, 2020

Artwork of a pulsar emitting beams of energy as it orbits a white dwarf; the warping of spacetime is depicted as the change in an imaginary grid around them. The pulsar is not to scale; the white dwarf is hundreds of times larger. ESO/L. Calçada

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: neutron stars

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: white dwarfs

A white dwarf is cooking a giant planet and slowly eating it

Phil Plait

Dec 5, 2019

Artwork depicting a white dwarf evaporating a close-orbiting giant planet, with some of that material forming a disk around the dead star. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: white dwarfs

Tag: Bad Astronomy

The most compact accreting binary X-ray millisecond pulsar ever!

Phil Plait

Jun 20, 2019

Artwork depicting a millisecond pulsar, sped up to phenomenal rotation rates by material it's eating from its companion star. Credit: NASA / GSFC SVS / Dana Berry

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: white dwarfs

Making a supernova the hard way: Tossing a white dwarf into a black hole

Phil Plait

May 30, 2019

Artist’s impression of a white dwarf having matter siphoned off by a black hole. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: white dwarfs

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: planetary nebula

Gorgeousness in death

Phil Plait

Feb 15, 2019

The planetary nebula Abell 36, the glowing gas thrown off by a nearby dying star. Credit: ESO

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: planetary nebula

The sun is destined to turn into a gargantuan crystal ball after it dies

Elizabeth Rayne

Jan 11, 2019

ESA image of a crystallized white dwarf

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: white dwarfs

A dead star is eating its planets

Phil Plait

Jul 25, 2018

Artwork depicting a white dwarf that’s destroyed its inner planets, which are now raining down on it. Credit: Jon Lomberg / Gemini Observatory

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: white dwarfs

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Did our first known interstellar visitor come from a dead star?

Phil Plait

Jan 4, 2018

Artwork depicting what ‘Oumuamua might look like; observations indicate it’s highly elongated. But where did it come from? Credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: white dwarfs

The first evidence of planets around another star was found in… 1917?

Phil Plait

Nov 6, 2017

An artist’s rendering of a comet (which is very similar to an asteroid) getting torn apart near a white dwarf. Many white dwarfs have rings of dust around them as well, more evidence of a planetary system orbiting them. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Tag: Bad Astronomy

Tag: white dwarfs

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