Astronomers have observed a white dwarf – a highly compact Earth-sized stellar ember – that is creating a colourful shockwave as it moves through space, leaving them searching for an explanation.
The highly magnetised white dwarf is gravitationally bound to another star in what is called a binary system. The white dwarf is siphoning gas from its companion as the two orbit close to each other. The system is located in the Milky Way about 730 light-years from Earth – relatively nearby in cosmic terms – in the constellation Auriga.
A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 9.5 trillion km.
The shockwave – more specifically a bow shock – caused by the white dwarf was observed using the European Southern Observatory’s Chile-based Very Large Telescope. The shockwave was seen in an image released by the scientists glowing in various colours produced when material flowing outward from the white dwarf collided with interstellar gas.
“A shockwave is created when fast-moving material ploughs into surrounding gas, suddenly compressing and heating it. A bow shock is the curved shock front that forms when an object moves rapidly through space, similar to the wave in front of a boat moving through water,” said astrophysicist Simone Scaringi of Durham University in England, co-lead author of the study published yesterday in the journal Nature Astronomy.
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