Some white dwarfs may appear in different colors

Astronomers recently found that some white dwarfs may appear yellow, green, cyan, pink, or purple rather than white. The source does not specify the exact date of the discovery.

The cause is trace amounts of substances that have fallen onto the star: they interact with its atmosphere and change its usual white color. The illustration shows the white dwarf WD J1330+6435 surrounded by an accretion disk, where gas and rocks orbit.

White dwarfs are small, dim stars left behind after a star like the Sun runs out of nuclear fuel. They are too dim for their color to be seen from Earth.

Image: NASA, ESA, STScI, and G. Bacon (STScI) CC BY 4.0 · License

Translation editor: Ловушкин А.