Celestia Forums

Does anyone know if there's a relation between the mass of the progenitor star and the mase of the white dwarf it ends up being at the end of its life? And if so, what is it?

Well, obviously there must be *some* relationship

However, don't forget that many are in binary systems. The orbital parameters are going to be different among them, resulting in different mass transfers and different histories, thus different results.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf

If you want to believe wikipedia, then its about 1/2 as mass, providing of course that the average star creates the average white dwarf. However this might also be incorrect. There is probably two more questions that need to be answered first to create at least very rough estimate.

At what mass does the average super massive star create a black hole, and at what mass does the average read dwarf not have enough mass to create white dwarf.

so just guessing;
a 5 sol mass star will create the highest 1.4 sol mass white dwarf.
a 1 sol mass star will create the average 0.5 sol mass white dwarf.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997MNRAS.288..585J

To answer my own question, this paper looks promising...