NASA astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to measure the mass of a white dwarf, an important step for understanding how stars die.
Astronomers have finally weighed an isolated white dwarf, or the shriveled husk of a dead star, using a strange phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity decades ago.
In the new study, astronomers used the legendary Hubble Space Telescope to measure the mass of a standalone white dwarf called LAWD 37, according to a study published in the March issue of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Although astronomers have weighed white dwarfs in binary star systems — systems where two stars orbit a common center of mass — LAWD 37 is the first white dwarf to be measured in isolation.
"These events are rare, and the effects are tiny," said McGill in a NASA statement ."For instance, the size of our measured offset is like measuring the length of a car on the Moon as seen from Earth." This extremely precise measurement took years of observations with Hubble to acquire.
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