PM: Star Has an Almost Pure Oxygen Atmosphere

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PM: Star Has an Almost Pure Oxygen Atmosphere

Post by bystander » Sat Apr 02, 2016 3:42 pm

Newly Discovered Star Has an Almost Pure Oxygen Atmosphere
Popular Mechanics | 2016 Mar 31
A newly discovered star is unlike any ever found. With an outermost layer of 99.9 percent pure oxygen, its atmosphere is the most oxygen-rich in the known universe. Heck, it makes Earth's meager 21 percent look downright suffocating.

The strange stellar oddity is a radically new type of white dwarf star, and was discovered by a team of Brazilian astronomers led by Kepler de Souza Oliveira at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The star is unique in the known pool of 32,000 white dwarf stars, and is the only known star of any kind with an almost pure oxygen atmosphere. The new white dwarf has a mouthful of a name—SDSS J124043.01+671034.68—but has been nicknamed 'Dox' (pronounced Dee-Awks) by Kepler's team. The discovery was reported today in a paper in the journal Science. ...

A white dwarf with an oxygen atmosphere - S. O. Kepler, Detlev Koester, Gustavo Ourique
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