ASTRO-110 Chapter Notes - Chapter 14: Electron Degeneracy Pressure, Schwarzschild Radius, Dwarf Nova
Document Summary
A white dwarf is the corpse of a low-mass star, supported against the crush of gravity by electron degeneracy pressure: mostly carbon, high mass smaller (more mess is smaller) White dwarf limit/chandrasekhar limit: mass cannot exceed 1. 4 times the mass of the sun in a close binary system, gas from a companion star can spill over toward the white dwarf, forming a swirling accretion disk around it. A nova is caused by hydrogen fusion on the surface of a white dwarf in a binary system: a white dwarf that reaches the 1. 4m sun limit will explode in a white dwarf supernova. A neutron star is a ball of neutrons just a few km in radius but with a mass like the sun. Neutron stars can spin rapidly and shift beams of radiation along their magnetic poles, which we detect as pulses of radiation if the beams sweep by earth.
