Dwarf planets in the outer Solar System are extraordinarily difficult worlds to study. Pluto, Eris, Makemake, and Haumea are so distant that even powerful telescopes often see them as little more than points of light. Their surfaces can be studied through spectroscopy, and their brightness can reveal clues about rotation and composition, but detecting a … Read more
When most people think of rings in the Solar System, Saturn immediately comes to mind. Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have ring systems, so for a long time astronomers naturally associated rings with giant planets. Then something unexpected happened. Astronomers discovered rings around objects far smaller than planets, including the Centaur Chariklo, the dwarf planet … Read more
A star normally appears steady against the night sky. But under very specific circumstances, it can suddenly vanish, return, disappear again, and then reappear several times within a matter of seconds or minutes. This unusual celestial event is called a grazing stellar occultation. It occurs when the apparent edge of a nearby astronomical body, most … Read more
An asteroid may be millions of kilometers away, appear as little more than a faint point of light, and still have its size measured surprisingly well from Earth. The trick is not necessarily to photograph the asteroid itself. Instead, astronomers can wait for the asteroid to pass directly in front of a distant star. For … Read more
A tiny asteroid millions of kilometers away may be far too small to appear as anything more than a faint point of light in a telescope. Sometimes it cannot be imaged clearly at all. Yet astronomers can still measure an asteroid only a few kilometers across, refine its position, estimate its shape, and occasionally discover … Read more
A pulsating white dwarf may look simple from the outside: a compact stellar remnant slowly cooling after exhausting its nuclear fuel. Inside, however, it is anything but uniform. Layers rich in hydrogen, helium, carbon, and oxygen can form sharp or gradual chemical boundaries. When gravity-mode pulsations travel through this layered interior, some waves interact strongly … Read more
A white dwarf may look almost featureless from the outside. It is small, faint, extremely dense, and no longer powered by ordinary nuclear fusion. Its visible atmosphere reveals useful information about temperature, surface gravity, and chemical composition, but much of the star’s history is locked far beneath that thin outer layer. Fortunately, some white dwarfs … Read more
A white dwarf may look like the quietest kind of star imaginable. It has exhausted its nuclear fuel. It no longer produces energy through sustained fusion in its core. It is roughly the size of Earth while containing a substantial fraction of the Sun’s mass, and over billions of years it simply cools and fades. … Read more
A white dwarf can look like the very definition of a quiet star. It is the compact remnant left behind after a Sun-like star has exhausted its nuclear fuel, shed its outer layers, and compressed its remaining core into an object roughly the size of Earth. There is no hydrogen fusion roaring in its center. … Read more
SU Ursae Majoris stars are small binary systems capable of surprisingly dramatic behavior. Most of the time, they are relatively faint. Every so often, however, their brightness suddenly increases in an ordinary dwarf-nova outburst. Then, after several such events, something larger happens: the system enters a superoutburst that lasts longer and usually reaches a greater … Read more