Binary White Dwarf Stars 3-panel
Artwork • February 7th, 2019
Artwork showing a pair of white dwarfs in orbit around each other. The middle panel shows the two dense, dead stars in orbit, while the third panel illustrates what happens when one star begins to siphon material off its partner. Earth is shown for reference—while it is not much smaller than the white dwarfs, they are 200,000 times more dense. ZTF is well-suited to detect binary star systems like this one.