Detail View: NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Collection: White Dwarf Stars Cool
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Title:
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White Dwarf Stars Cool
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Explanation:
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Diminutive by stellar standards [ http://zebu.uoregon.edu/textbook/se.html ], white dwarf stars are also intensely hot [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951130.html ] ... but they are cooling. No longer do their interior nuclear fires burn [ http://fusedweb.pppl.gov/default.html ], so they will continue to cool until they fade away. This Hubble Space Telescope image [ http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/95/32.html ] covers a small region near the center of a globular cluster [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970919.html ] known as M4. Here, researchers have discovered a large concentration of white dwarf stars [ http://plabpc.csustan.edu/astro/stars/stars.htm ] (circled above). This was expected - low mass stars, including the Sun, are believed to evolve [ http://plabpc.csustan.edu/astro/stars/stars.htm ] to the white dwarf stage. Studying how these stars cool could lead [ http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/press-releases/95-32.txt ] to a better understanding of their ages, of the age of their parent globular cluster, and even the age of our universe!
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Credit and Copyright:
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H. Richer (UBC [ http://view.ubc.ca/ ]), NASA [ http://www.nasa.gov/ ]
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keyword:
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stars
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facet_where:
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Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)
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facet_what:
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Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
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original url:
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http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap971102.html
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UID:
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SPD-APOD-ap971102
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