Celestia Forums

I thought this little bit of news may be of intrest to the scientists and community members here.

"Astronomers using the Gemini North and Keck II telescopes have peered inside a violent binary star system to find that one of the interacting stars has lost so much mass to its partner that it has regressed to a strange, inert body resembling no known star type."


More can be read here- http://www.gemini.edu/EFEriImages

Interesting. I guess the name "black dwarf" is already taken by white dwarfs that have cooled to the point of invisibility (which AFAIK won't happen for another few trillion years)...?

I like the name Grey Dwarf myself;

by the way, isn't this something similar to the process that forms a Class 1a supernova, like Tycho's Star?

http://www.solstation.com/x-objects/tycho-s.htm