Located only about 130 light years away is the white dwarf star named ZTF J1901+1458. The star may be only slightly larger than the size of our Moon, but its mass is heavier than the Sun (about 1.35 times), making it the most massive white dwarf star ever discovered. And that’s not all. The said star also seems to be a very special case.
Its dense and mass place it right on the verge of the Chandrasekhar limit - the maximum mass a white dwarf can be before it becomes so unstable that it blows up in a spectacular supernova.
"We caught this very interesting object that wasn't quite massive enough to explode," said theoretical astrophysicist Ilaria Caiazzo of Caltech. "We are truly probing how massive a white dwarf can be."
Up to the Chandrasekhar limit, around 1.4 solar masses, something called electron degeneracy pressure keeps the white dwarf from collapsing further under its own gravity. At a certain pressure level, electrons are stripped from their atomic nuclei - and, because identical electrons can't occupy the same space, these electrons supply the outward pressure that keeps the star from collapsing.
More about this intriguing star over at ScienceAlert.
(Image Credit: Giuseppe Parisi)
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