Planetesimal orbits around a white dwarf. Initially, every planetesimal has a circular, prograde orbit. The kick forms an eccentric debris disk which with prograde (blue) and retrograde orbits (orange ...

"You shouldn't see any metals on the surface of a white dwarf unless the white dwarf is actively eating something." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

White dwarfs, the glowing cores of dead stars, often host disks of dusty debris. However, these debris disks only appear 10-20 millions of years following the star’s violent Red Giant phase. A new ...

"When we saw the results, it actually fitted this long-standing question of how these hypervelocity white dwarfs formed. It was super cool." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an ...

In exoplanetary science, white dwarfs are usually only an afterthought. Most extrasolar planet hunters are too busy looking for an Earth 2.0 to give these hyper-dense stellar remnants much ...

An international team of astronomers has discovered a cosmic rarity: an ultra-massive white dwarf star resulting from a white dwarf merging with another star, rather than through the evolution of a ...