A white dwarf star is the dense, cooling core that remains after a low- to medium-mass star runs out of fuel. The new study, published Thursday (Oct. 15) in the journal RAS Techniques and Instruments, shows that white dwarfs come in far more colors than their name suggests.
"Most stars, including most white dwarfs, behave like 'perfect radiators,' so their colour is set almost entirely by temperature. But nobody had really looked into what else might be possible for white dwarfs," Mark Hollands, an astronomer at the University of Warwick in the U.K. and first author of the study, said in a statement. "It turns out these incredibly dense stars can produce colours nobody expected, and some of them genuinely surprised me."
"Any trace elements that may be present, such as carbon, calcium and sodium, interact with the surrounding dense helium plasma and absorb light across a wider range of colours than they would at lower densities," the researchers said in a statement. "This shifts a star's colour away from the orange, white and blue [typical] of a perfect radiator."
Color-accurate simulated images of white dwarfs. The varying amounts/compositions of accreted material and white dwarf temperatures allow for a diverse array of colors, including green. (Image credit: Mark Hollands/University of Warwick)Scientists found that carbon-rich white dwarfs tend to be purple or pink, while those that contain debris from asteroids or comets are usually yellower. Cyan or pale-blue white dwarfs occur when hydrogen and helium molecules strike each other in very dense atmospheres.
Related storiesThe team also discovered WD J1330+6435 — a green star that contains rocky material. The green comes from the additional elements of calcium, lithium and sodium in the star's atmosphere, creating a unique "chartreuse green appearance" that would be visible to the human eye, if we could see it up close.
Overall, in the sample of stars studied — 151 white dwarfs within 65 light-years of Earth — about 1 in 30 white dwarfs glowed in a color other than white. This could mean there are far more colorful stellar remnants littering the universe than anyone anticipated.
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