Astronomers Surprised After Finding Dead Star With No Atmosphere

Photo Credit: UCL

We might have to update our understanding of dead stars, as scientists have discovered one that doesn’t have an atmosphere, and seems to have a solid exterior. A new study, published in the journal Science, leverages data from a NASA satellite to study the star.

The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) satellite is a collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency and offers a new way of seeing X-ray light in the cosmos by measuring its polarization. This helped the team observe the magnetar 4U 0142+61, which is located 13,000 light-years away in the Cassiopeia constellation.

Objects With The Strongest Magnetic Fields

"This was completely unexpected," said UCL's Professor Silvia Zane, co-author of the study. "I was convinced there would be an atmosphere. The star’s gas has reached a tipping point and become solid in a similar way that water might turn to ice. This is a result of the star’s incredibly strong magnetic field."

While magnetar sounds something straight out of an anime series, it’s a term used for highly magnetized neutron stars, the dense core of massive stars that went supernova. Magnetars are known to have the strongest magnetic fields in the observable universe. The one in question revealed something unusual -- it showed way less polarized light than astronomers expect from a normal star’s atmosphere.

Lacking Deep Understanding Of Neutron Stars

Besides, the team of astronomers has also found a “wiggle” in the angle of polarization that suggests that the dead star likely has a “solid crust.” While the finding is intriguing, it could help scientists explain whether other neutron stars comprise atmospheres at all.

This is one of the most debated topics among scientists even though a thin carbon atmosphere was detected on one of the neutron stars by Harvard and NASA’s Chandra Observatory in 2009. Astronomers will have to carry out a deep probe to determine such details about neutron stars and put an end to the debate.

Remnants Of An Ancient Solar System

Astronomers have found something terrifying in our cosmic backyard -- a star system like our own, but all that’s left are its ancient remnants. The star at the center of the now-destroyed solar system has been designated WDJ2147-4035 and is a white dwarf, per a new study.

Astronomers discovered the wreckage of this star system just 90 light-years away from the Earth. White dwarfs are the end state of most stars in the universe after they run out of all the burning fuel. Our Sun is also believed to become a white dwarf once it runs out of fuel.