Homeboy Astronomy Blog - Homeboy Astronomy Blog – Down-to-Earth Advices for Amateur Astronomers

Astronomy and telecommunications have one common thing, the great amount of abbreviations and strange concepts. Few years ago I worked for Ericsson, and the very first things I came across with were those strange abbreviations, such as SS7, M-MGw, EDGE and ATM. When I began interested in astronomy I noticed that the amount of things to study and understand in astronomy is enough for the rest of my life.

Few days ago I received a long feedback from one of the readers of HomeboyAstronomy. I noticed that I should write more about the basics of astronomy, and therefore today I decided to write about one interesting phenomenon in the space, white dwarfs. Now, what is the white dwarf? Let’s find out.

When a star that has a small size comes to its end, it blows its outer parts to the space. By this planetary nebulae are born. If the remaining object has a mass smaller than 1.4 times the mass of the Sun, it will become a very small and dense object, a white dwarf. Because the white dwarf has accumulated energy, it will shine bright for pretty long time, but it will not create new energy anymore. During the time the white dwarf gets cooler and cooler, turns to red, and finally becomes a cold black dwarf.

The first white dwarf was discovered by Alvan Clark (1804-1887) together with his son Alvan G. Clark (1832-1897). They were testing a new 50 mm. objective in 1862 while they discovered a little accompany next to Sirius. This little object had intensity of only 8.6 and it orbited Sirius in 50 years. This little object is difficult to observe because of the brightness of Sirius, but it is possible by using a 15 mm. or larger telescope.

The white dwarf located next to Sirius is very small, about the size of the Earth. Anyhow the white dwarf is very dense. A cubic centimeter of the white dwarf would have a weight of several tons.