In a new paper, the authors studied an unusual binary system of white dwarfs.
White dwarfs are stars
Pelisoli and her colleagues discovered a double starwhich will soon merge and explode. Analyzing the data collected by the orbiting telescope TESS, they drew attention to the star HD265435. It is located in the constellation Gemini at a distance of 1.5 thousand light years from Earth.
On the one hand, a white dwarf can absorbthere is enough matter for the neighbor’s plasma to begin to flow directly onto its surface. If this does not happen, the stars will gradually come closer and merge. In both cases, a supernova explosion will occur.
Indgrid Pelisoli, one of the authors of the article and a research fellow at the University of Warwick.
The brightness of this star either increased or decreased, usually this indicates the presence of other planets nearby, but in this case it turned out to be a sign of the unusual structure of this star system.
The change in brightness was due to the fact thatHD265435 is a double star. It consists of an invisible white dwarf and a so-called hot subdwarf. This is what scientists call very compact and hot stars that appear after the shedding of their outer shells by some types of large stars in the last stages of their existence.
The sub-dwarf turned out to have an unusual shape; it looked like a drop, stretched out under the force of gravity.
In about 70 million years, both stars will merge. As a result, an object will appear at least 1.65 times heavier than the Sun.
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