AST 2002 Chapter Notes - Chapter 13: Hypernova, Event Horizon, Cygnus X-1
Document Summary
Never any larger than 1. 4m sun, a white dwarf is the core of a low-mass star, exposed after sloughing off its outer layers after depleting its hydrogen and helium supplies. Using election degeneracy pressure, a white dwarf can overcome gravity"s crushing effects on it. A typical white dwarf is about the size of earth, and contains the mass of the sun. A white dwarf in a binary system may, acquire hydrogen from its neighbor through an accretion disk. In such an event, it is possible for the white dwarf to begin fusing hydrogen again, causing a nova, an explosion 100,000 times brighter than the sun. In an event where a white dwarf"s mass reached beyond the white dwarf limit of 1. 4m sun, it will instead explode as a white dwarf supernova. The remnants of once-great stars, neutron stars have a radius of 10 km, and a mass comparable to the sun.
