Sentences with phrase «white dwarfs orbiting»

But it turns out white dwarfs can breach that tipping point in another situation: Instead of a giant star losing material to a white dwarf, two white dwarfs orbiting each other could slam together and explode.

In the end, the team plucked out 38 new cool white dwarfs orbiting in the galactic halo.

That happens if it has a companion star, as most stars in the galaxy do, and the white dwarf orbits it closely enough to steal material from it.

Currently, the white dwarfs orbit each other once every 4 hours, but their orbit is shrinking, and in about 700 million years, the two white dwarfs will see a cataclysmic crash, scientists said.

«Our final image should show us a companion 100 times fainter than any other white dwarf orbiting a neutron star and about 10 times fainter than any known white dwarf, but we don't see a thing,» team member Bart Dunlap, a graduate student from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said in a statement.

Based on that distance and the separation between the images of the A star, the M dwarf and the white dwarf, we can estimate that the white dwarf orbits roughly 2200 astronomical units (AU) away from the A star with the disk.

Not exact matches

The extremely strong gravity of a massive neutron star in orbit with a companion white dwarf star puts competing theories of gravity to a test more stringent than any available before

Planets orbiting more compact objects, such as white dwarfs, pulsars and black holes, might have even shorter years since they can get closer in.

TRIPLE THREAT A pulsar (left) is orbited by two white dwarfs — one close in, one farther away — in this illustration of the system PSR J0337 +1715.

They also are orbiting very close to the tidal radius, or distance at which gravitational tides from the white dwarf can rip apart a rocky body.

These findings are evidence for a belt of comet - like bodies orbiting the white dwarf, similar to our solar system's Kuiper Belt.

In this artist's conception, a Ceres - like asteroid is slowly disintegrating as it orbits a white dwarf star.

Previous studies show that it takes about 68 days for the pulsar to orbit its white dwarf companion, meaning they share an uncommonly wide orbit.

«Asteroid ripped apart to form star's glowing ring system: Research includes first image of ring system orbiting a white dwarf.»

A nova can occur if the strong gravity of a white dwarf pulls material from its orbiting companion star.

At first glance this exploding star had all the features of a type Ia supernova, which happens when a small, dense white dwarf star steals material from an orbiting companion and then explodes.

Two white dwarf stars orbiting each other will collide in 900,000 years, possibly annihilating both.

The globular cluster M4 (left) hosts a pulsar circled by a white dwarf (arrow, right) and a Jupiter - sized planet orbiting both stars.

Published in Nature Astronomy and funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the European Research Council, the study finds the remains of shattered asteroids orbiting a double sun consisting of a white dwarf and a brown dwarf roughly 1000 light - years away in a system called SDSS 1557.

PSR J1713 +0747, as it is known, has a tiny white dwarf companion star, and the two orbit each other exceptionally predictably.

Badenes's team examined archival observations and found a white dwarf and neutron star orbiting one another extremely closely.

Due to their mutual gravity, the millisecond pulsar and white dwarf enter into a perfectly round orbit around each other.

And even then, the planet would have to orbit a special kind of star, a white dwarf, for the CFCs to show up.

Both occur in systems where two stars orbit each other: a white dwarf sucks away the outer layers of a larger companion star until the smaller star reaches a critical mass, causing an explosion.

The detected water most likely came from a minor planet, at least 90 km in diameter but probably much larger, that once orbited the GD 61 star before it became a white dwarf around 200 million years ago.

The scientists report that a minor planet in the planetary system was orbiting around the white dwarf, and its trajectory was somehow altered, perhaps by the gravitational pull of a planet in the same system.

A Type Ia supernova results from a white dwarf that's part of a binary system (that is, one that shares an orbit with another star) and was about twice the size of our sun during its life.

Those remnants went into orbit around the white dwarf — much like the rings around Saturn, Zuckerman said — before eventually spiraling onto the star itself, bringing with them the building blocks for life.

With JWST, a few hours of integration time will be enough to detect Earth - like levels of water vapor, molecular oxygen, carbon dioxide and other generic biosignatures on planets orbiting a white dwarf; beyond that, observing the same planet for up to 1.7 days will be enough to detect the two CFCs in concentrations of 750 parts per trillion, or 10 times greater than on Earth.

A white dwarf star in a binary orbit with a neighbour can slowly pull material off, gradually increasing its own...

Because these planets are light years away, and because the reflected light is incredibly dim, the James Webb Space Telescope will only be able to do this for large planets that orbit red and white dwarfs — but still, it's incredibly exciting to think that we might be able to identify signs of life from all the way over here on our little blue marble.

The planet orbits a pulsar in a binary system with a white dwarf.

All are orbited by white dwarfs with orbital periods ranging from 4 to 27 hours.

However, in rare instances, two of these objects orbit each other so closely ---- orbiting every few minutes ---- so that the helium from the lighter of the two gets pulled off by tidal forces and accumulates on the more massive white dwarf.

So far, only about 10 percent of known pulsars are believed to be part of binary systems — most of them orbiting ancient white dwarf stars.

Building on past observations of the white dwarf called SDSSJ1043 +0855 (the dead core of a star that originally was a few times the mass of the Sun), which has been known to be gobbling up rocky material in its orbit for almost a decade, the team used Keck Observatory's HIRES instrument fitted to the 10 - meter Keck I telescope as well as data from the Hubble Space Telescope to measure and characterize the material being accreted by the star.

Take white dwarfs — they may sound cute, but their tidal forces are living hell to anything orbiting them.

During that night, the scientists were able to measure the changing Doppler shift of the star NLTT 11748 as it orbited its faint, but more massive, white dwarf companion.

Astronomers have even used the blended debris surrounding white dwarfs to decipher whether any rocky planets were once in orbit.