A white dwarf, also called a degenerate dwarf

A white dwarf, also called a degenerate dwarf, is a stellar remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to that of the Sun, while its volume is comparable to that of Earth. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes from the emission of stored thermal energy; no fusion takes place in a white dwarf wherein mass is converted to energy. The nearest known white dwarf is Sirius B, at 8.6 light years, the smaller component of the Sirius binary star. There are currently thought to be eight white dwarfs among the hundred star systems nearest the Sun.The unusual faintness of white dwarfs was first recognized in 1910. The name white dwarf was coined by Willem Luyten in 1922.

White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of stars whose mass is not high enough to become a neutron star, including our Sun and over 97% of the other stars in the Milky Way., §1. After the hydrogen–fusing period of a main-sequence star of low or medium mass ends, such a star will expand to a red giant during which it fuses helium to carbon and oxygen in its core by the triple-alpha process. If a red giant has insufficient mass to generate the core temperatures required to fuse carbon, around 1 billion K, an inert mass of carbon and oxygen will build up at its center. After a star sheds its outer layers and forms a planetary nebula, it will leave behind this core, which is the remnant white dwarf.Usually, therefore, white dwarfs are composed of carbon and oxygen. If the mass of the progenitor is between 8 and 10.5 solar masses (M☉), the core temperature is sufficient to fuse carbon but not neon, in which case an oxygen–neon–magnesium white dwarf may form.Stars of very low mass will not be able to fuse helium, hence, a helium white dwarf may form by mass loss in binary systems.

The material in a white dwarf no longer undergoes fusion reactions, so the star has no source of energy. As a result, it cannot support itself by the heat generated by fusion against gravitational collapse, but is supported only by electron degeneracy pressure, causing it to be extremely dense. The physics of degeneracy yields a maximum mass for a non-rotating white dwarf, the Chandrasekhar limit—approximately 1.4 M☉—beyond which it cannot be supported by electron degeneracy pressure. A carbon-oxygen white dwarf that approaches this mass limit, typically by mass transfer from a companion star, may explode as a type Ia supernova via a process known as carbon detonation.(SN 1006 is thought to be a famous example.)

A white dwarf is very hot when it forms, but because it has no source of energy, it will gradually radiate its energy and cool. This means that its radiation, which initially has a high color temperature, will lessen and redden with time. Over a very long time, a white dwarf will cool to temperatures at which it will no longer emit significant heat or light, and it will become a cold black dwarf. The length of time it takes for a white dwarf to reach this state is calculated to be longer than the current age of the universe (approximately 13.8 billion years), and it is thought that no black dwarfs yet exist. The oldest white dwarfs still radiate at temperatures of a few thousand kelvin.

The first white dwarf discovered was in the triple star system of 40 Eridani, which contains the relatively bright main sequence star 40 Eridani A, orbited at a distance by the closer binary system of the white dwarf 40 Eridani B and the main sequence red dwarf 40 Eridani C. The pair 40 Eridani B/C was discovered by William Herschel on 31 January 1783;, p. 73 it was again observed by Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve in 1825 and by Otto Wilhelm von Struve in 1851.In 1910, Henry Norris Russell, Edward Charles Pickering and Williamina Fleming discovered that, despite being a dim star, 40 Eridani B was of spectral type A, or white. In 1939, Russell looked back on the discovery.

Although white dwarfs are known with estimated masses as low as 0.17 M☉ and as high as 1.33 M☉,the mass distribution is strongly peaked at 0.6 M☉, and the majority lie between 0.5 to 0.7 M☉.The estimated radii of observed white dwarfs are typically 0.8–2 % the radius of the Sun;this is comparable to the Earth's radius of approximately 0.9% solar radius. A white dwarf, then, packs mass comparable to the Sun's into a volume that is typically a million times smaller than the Sun's; the average density of matter in a white dwarf must therefore be, very roughly, 1,000,000 times greater than the average density of the Sun, or approximately 106 g/cm3, or 1 tonne per cubic centimetre. A typical white dwarf has a density of between 10 7 and 1011 kg per cubic meter. White dwarfs are composed of one of the densest forms of matter known, surpassed only by other compact stars such as neutron stars, black holes and, hypothetically, quark stars.[30]

White dwarfs were found to be extremely dense soon after their discovery. If a star is in a binary system, as is the case for Sirius B or 40 Eridani B, it is possible to estimate its mass from observations of the binary orbit. This was done for Sirius B by 1910, yielding a mass estimate of 0.94 M☉. (A more modern estimate is 1.00 M☉.)Since hotter bodies radiate more energy than colder ones, a star's surface brightness can be estimated from its effective surface temperature, and that from its spectrum. If the star's distance is known, its absolute (overall) luminosity can also be estimated. From the absolute luminosity and distance, the star's surface area and its radius can be calculated. Reasoning of this sort led to the realization, puzzling to astronomers at the time, that Sirius B and 40 Eridani B must be very dense. When Ernst Öpik estimated the density of a number of visual binary stars in 1916, he found that 40 Eridani B had a density of over 25,000 times the Sun's, which was so high that he called it "impossible".As Arthur Stanley Eddington put it later in 1927