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Researchers at University of Warwick and University of Colorado Boulder have directly observed, for the first time, four white dwarfs stars orbiting in double star systems in our nearby region of space. These stellar binaries are all located within 65 light-years of Earth, and one of them is the ninth closest white dwarf to our Sun.
The four systems all have red dwarf star companions, larger and brighter stars, making it look like these were single star systems. The new results, published in MNRAS, have identified that each of these nearby red dwarfs stars were hosting a hidden white dwarf companion star.
First author, Dr Mairi O’Brien, Research Fellow, University of Warwick said: “Nearby isolated white dwarfs are usually easy to find, but we couldn't see these four stars directly in visible wavelengths because their red dwarf companions were drowning out their light. It's a reminder that even in our own cosmic neighbourhood, we can still find surprises if we look in the right way, at the right wavelengths.”
Astronomers have performed detailed surveys of the local neighbourhood of stars for decades, but white dwarfs like these have been notoriously hard to find. These four nearby systems were of interest because they showed a substantial radial wobble, a phenomenon in which a star subtly wobbles backwards and forwards, indicating a massive companion object is orbiting.
