Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) | 2017 Nov 01
[img3="Group of scientists in Brazilian universities and research institutions observe star demoted to white dwarf status because of companion "]http://agencia.fapesp.br/agencia-novo/i ... /26540.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]A group of Brazilian astronomers observed a pair of celestial objects rarely seen in the Milky Way: a very low-mass white dwarf and a brown dwarf.
A white dwarf is the endpoint of the evolution of an intermediate- or low-mass star, with a mass between 0.5 and 8 times that of our Sun. A brown dwarf is a substellar object with mass intermediate between those of a star and a planet.
On analyzing the binary system more closely, they discovered something even more unusual: the white dwarf’s existence was prematurely cut off by its companion, a brown dwarf, which caused its early death through “malnutrition” or loss of matter. ...
The binary is located in the constellation Perseus... It is very low in mass – the least massive in this class ever identified... The white dwarf’s mass is between two and three tenths of the Sun’s mass. Its surface temperature is 28,500 Kelvin (K). The brown dwarf’s mass is roughly 34–46 times that of Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System. ...
HS 2231+2441: an HW Vir system composed of a low-mass white dwarf and a brown dwarf - Leonardo A. Almeida et al
- Monthly Notices of the RAS 472(3):3093 (Dec 2017) DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx2150
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1708.04623 > 2017 Aug 15