Astronomers find pair of 'cataclysmic' stars orbiting each other once every 51 minutes

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Astronomers find pair of 'cataclysmic' stars orbiting each other once every 51 minutes
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It's the first direct evidence to prove a decades-old theory on transitioning binary star systems.

. They specifically searched for signals of systems with ultrashort orbits by looking for dramatic light flashes in the survey as well as bursts of gravitational waves.

"This is a rare case where we caught one of these systems in the act of switching from hydrogen to helium accretion," explained Kevin Burdge, a Pappalardo Fellow in MIT's Department of Physics. "People predicted these objects should transition to ultrashort orbits," Burdge continued, "and it was debated for a long time whether they could get short enough to emit detectable gravitational waves. This discovery puts that to rest."​Zwicky Transient Facility

. ZFT uses a telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California to survey the sky in high resolution. The survey has captured an eye-watering amount of information — it has taken more than 1,000 images of more than 1 billion stars, showing changes in brightness over days, months, and years.Of more than a thousand known cataclysmic variables , where a white dwarf is accreting from a hydrogen-rich star, only a dozen have orbital periods below 75 minutes1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.

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