A newly discovered type of stellar explosion could help us better understand thermonuclear outbursts on dead stars.
This collapsed core is very dense. White dwarf stars have a mass up to 1.4 times the mass of the Sun, packed in a sphere the size of Earth. Many of them can be found in binary systems.In some rare cases – about 10 have been identified in the Milky Way – the binary systems are close enough that the white dwarf strips material from the companion, resulting in what is known as a recurrent nova.
Periodically, the mass becomes so great that the pressure and temperature at the bottom of the layer is sufficient to trigger a thermonuclear explosion, violently expelling the excess material into space. That's the nova.The researchers first identified a white dwarf emitting a micronova in data from the TESS exoplanet-hunting telescope.
When a white dwarf with a powerful magnetic field is in a close binary, it can siphon material from its companion. The magnetic field channels this material to the white dwarf's poles, where it accumulates to eventually cause an outburst, similar to than a typical white dwarf nova.says astronomer Paul Groot"The hydrogen fuel can be contained at the base of the magnetic poles of some white dwarfs, so that fusion only happens at these magnetic poles.
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