Related papers: White dwarf collisions and the meteoritic Ne-E ann…
There are no known examples of magnetic white dwarfs with fields larger than about 3MG paired with a non-degenerate companion in detached binary systems. The suggestion is that highly magnetic, isolated white dwarfs may originate from stars…
Type Ia supernovae result when carbon-oxygen white dwarfs in binary systems accrete mass from companion stars, reach a critical mass, and explode. The near uniformity of their light curves makes these supernovae good standard candles for…
Electron diffraction, imaging, and energy loss provide evidence for unlayered graphene sheets in the core of certain interstellar graphite onions (from the meteorite Murchison) whose isotopes indicate formation in the atmosphere of…
It was recently demonstrated that asymmetric dark matter can ignite supernovae by collecting and collapsing inside lone sub-Chandrasekhar mass white dwarfs, and that this may be the cause of Type Ia supernovae. A ball of asymmetric dark…
Mergers of binaries comprised of compact objects can give rise to explosive transient events, heralding the birth of exotic objects which cannot be formed through single star evolution. Using a large number of direct N-body simulations, we…
The transit of primordial black holes through a white dwarf causes localized heating around the trajectory of the black hole through dynamical friction. For sufficiently massive black holes, this heat can initiate runaway thermonuclear…
White dwarf stars that enter the tidal radius of black holes with masses $\lesssim$ $10^5$ M$_{\odot}$ are doomed to be ripped apart by tidal forces. Black holes in this mass range between stellar black holes and supermassive black holes…
We interpret the peculiar super-solar nitrogen abundance recently reported by the James Webb Space Telescope observations for GN-z11 ($z=10.6$) using our state-of-the-art chemical evolution models. The observed CNO ratios can be…
By performing an orbital analysis within a Galactic model including a bar, we found that it is plausible that the newly discovered stars that show enhanced Al and N accompanied by Mg underabundances may have formed in the outer halo, or…
A summary is given of planetary nebulae abundances from ISO measurements. It is shown that these nebulae show abundance gradients (with galactocentric distance), which in the case of neon, argon, sulfur and oxygen (with four exceptions) are…
The atmospheres of a large proportion of white dwarf stars are polluted by heavy elements that are expected to sink out of visible layers on short timescales. This has been interpreted as a signature of ongoing accretion of debris from…
A number of cool white dwarfs with metal traces, of spectral types DAZ, DBZ, and DZ have been found to exhibit infrared excess radiation due to circumstellar dust. The origin of this dust is possibly a tidally disrupted asteroid that formed…
WD 0145+234 is a white dwarf that is accreting metals from a circumstellar disc of planetary material. It has exhibited a substantial and sustained increase in 3-5 micron flux since 2018. Follow-up Spitzer photometry reveals that emission…
Spectroscopic observations of white dwarfs reveal that many of them are polluted by exoplanetary material, whose bulk composition can be uniquely probed this way. We present a spectroscopic and photometric analysis of the DA white dwarf…
Using the SDSS DR7 spectroscopic catalog, we searched the WISE AllWISE catalog to investigate the occurrence of warm dust, as inferred from IR excesses, around field M dwarfs (dMs). We developed SDSS/WISE color selection criteria to…
The Milky Way underwent significant transformations in its early history, characterised by violent mergers and satellite galaxy accretion. However, recent observations reveal notable star formation events over the past 4 Gyr, likely…
More than a decade after astronomers realized that disrupted planetary material likely pollutes the surfaces of many white dwarf stars, the discovery of transiting debris orbiting the white dwarf WD 1145+017 has opened the door to new…
The magnetic white dwarfs (MWDs) are found either isolated or in interacting binaries. They divide into two groups: a high field group (0.1-1,000MegaGauss) comprising some 13% of all white dwarfs (WDs), and a low field group (B<0.1MG) whose…
When white dwarfs freeze the plasma mixtures inside them undergo separation processes which can produce radical changes in the composition profile of the star. The abundance of neutron rich elements, such as $^{22}$Ne or $^{56}$Fe,…
Classical main-sequence chemically peculiar stars show light variability that originates in surface abundance spots. In the spots, the flux redistribution due to line (bound-bound) and bound-free transitions is modulated by stellar rotation…