White dwarf stars are the final evolutionary state of most stars. They are everywhere in the Galaxy and are relatively easy to model. So can we learn about our Galaxy solely by studying them? The authors of today’s paper show us a way.
Image credits: ESO/Y. Beletsky.
There’s so much to see in the Universe that we can forget there are still things to discover in our own neighborhood. The authors of today’s paper decided to search the Solar System a bit further, and made a very interesting discovery around the dwarf planet Makemake.
Our Sun’s ancestors are thought to form out of the primordial composition of the early Universe, almost pure hydrogen and helium. How likely are we to observe such stars?
Omega Centauri is a huge globular cluster, so much so that some astronomers think it could be the remnant of a disrupted dwarf galaxy. We will see that this is not necessarily true.
Astronomers may have finally observed the event that explains polluted white dwarfs and their debris disks.