The stars have the shortest orbit yet, circling each other every 51 minutes, confirming a decades-old prediction. In our galaxy, nearly half of the stars are solitary like the sun. The other half comprises stars that circle other stars, in pairs and multiples, with orbits so tight that some stell
An artist’s illustration shows a white dwarf circling a larger, sun-like star in an ultra-short orbit, forming a “cataclysmic” binary system. Credit: M.Weiss/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
A cataclysmic variable occurs when the two stars draw close, over billions of years, causing the white dwarf to start accreting, or eating material away from its partner star. This process can give off enormous, variable flashes of light that, centuries ago, astronomers assumed to be a result of some unknown cataclysm.
Decades ago, researchers at MIT and elsewhere predicted that such cataclysmic variables should transition to ultrashort orbits. This is the first time such a transitioning system has been observed directly. The survey has taken more than 1,000 images of each of the more than 1 billion stars in the sky, recording each star’s changing brightness over days, months, and years.
For this new study, Burdge looked through the ZTF data for stars that appeared to flash repeatedly, with a period of less than an hour — a frequency that typically signals a system of at least two closely orbiting objects, with one crossing the other and briefly blocking its light. They discovered that the first object was likely a white dwarf, at 1/100th the size of the sun and about half its mass. The second object was a sun-like star near the end of its life, at a tenth the size and mass of the sun . The stars also appeared to orbit each other every 51 minutes.“This one star looked like the sun, but the sun can’t fit into an orbit shorter than eight hours — what’s up here?” Burdge says.
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