A white dwarf is the dense, Earth-sized ember left when a star like the Sun exhausts its fuel and sheds its outer layers. It no longer fuses elements and shines only from leftover heat, slowly cooling over billions of years. Held up against gravity by quantum pressure, a white dwarf cannot exceed about 1.4 solar masses, the Chandrasekhar limit, beyond which it would collapse or explode. As they cool, their carbon-oxygen interiors crystallize.
Signals & Anomalies · Magnetars · Radio Astronomy
A stellar corpse in the Scutum arm pulses in radio waves and X-rays every 44 minutes. It does not behave like a magnetar, a pulsar, or a white dwarf. ...
Astrophysics · Stellar Evolution · White Dwarfs
In about five billion years the Sun will swell, shed its outer layers, and leave behind an Earth-sized ember of carbon and oxygen. New Gaia data shows...