Artist impression of an exploding ’White Dwarf’
Artist impression of an exploding 'White Dwarf' - When stars like our Sun use up all their fuel, they shrink to form white dwarfs. Sometimes such dead stars flare back to life in a super-hot explosion and produce a fireball of X-ray radiation. A research team from several German institutes including Tübingen University and led by Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) has now been able to observe such an explosion of X-ray light for the very first time. -It was to some extent a fortunate coincidence, really,- explains Ole König from the Astronomical Institute at FAU in the Dr. Karl Remeis observatory in Bamberg together with Jörn Wilms and a research team from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, the University of Tübingen, the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya in Barcelona und the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam. -These X-ray flashes last only a few hours and are almost impossible to predict, but the observational instrument must be pointed directly at the explosion at exactly the right time,- explains the astrophysicist. The instrument in this case is the eROSITA X-ray telescope, which is currently located one and a half million kilometers from Earth and has been surveying the sky for soft X-rays since 2019. On July 7, 2020 it measured strong X-ray radiation in an area of the sky that had been completely inconspicuous four hours previously.
TO READ THIS ARTICLE, CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT
And extend your reading, free of charge and with no commitment.
