April 7, 2020

Artist's concept of white dwarf pair

An article to be published in the “Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the discovery of a binary system formed by two white dwarfs with helium cores orbiting each other in 1201 seconds, one of the shortest orbital periods known in binary systems. A team of researchers led by astronomer Warren Brown of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (Cfa) used data collected by ESA’s Gaia space probe and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) of the pair cataloged as SDSS J232230.20+050942.06, or simply J2322+0509, conducting follow-up observations with others instruments to examine their characteristics. It’s a possible source of gravitational that will be detected by the LISA sallite currently being designed by ESA.