white dwarf

     

A white warf, also called a degenerate dwarf, is a small star composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. As white dwarfs have mass comparable to the Sun's and their volume is comparable to the Earth's, they are very dense. Their faint luminosity comes from the emission of stored heat. They comprise roughly 6% of all known stars in the solar neighborhood. The unusual faintness of white dwarfs was first recognized in 1910 by Henry Norris Russell, Edward Charles Pickering and Williamina Fleming;, p. 1 the name white dwarf was coined by Willem Luyten in 1922.

Trivia about white dwarf

  • One of the smallest of these "white" diminutive stars is Van Maanen's Star at 7,800 miles in diameter
  • As massive as the sun but much more condensed, Sirius B was the first of these "colorful" little stars to be discovered
  • The mass of a typical one of these stars is about 70% that of the sun
  • A companion to the Dog Star Sirius, the Pup was the first star identified as one of these colorful objects
  • Van Maanen's Star, one of these small stars, is only about the size of Earth
  • After becoming a red giant, the sun will probably shrink to the size of the Earth as one of these
  • My planet's star will reach the late stage called white this in only 3 billion years, so I had to get out of there

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