A team of German and American astronomers present far-ultraviolet observations of white dwarf KPD 0005+5106 and reveal that it is among the hottest stars ever known with a temperature of 200 000 K at its surface. Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing this discovery, which was made through spectroscopic observations with NASA's space-based Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE).

The International Astronomical Union has decided on the term plutoid as a name for dwarf planets like Pluto at a meeting of its Executive Committee in Oslo.

University of Texas at Austin astronomers Michael H. Montgomery and Kurtis A. Williams, along with graduate student Steven DeGennaro, have predicted and confirmed the existence of a new type of variable star, with the help of the 2.1-meter Otto Struve Telescope at McDonald Observatory.

Judi Provencal is star-struck, but not so much by the glitz and glam of Hollywood.

New observations from Suzaku, a joint Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA X-ray observatory, have challenged scientists’ conventional understanding of white dwarfs. Observers had believed white dwarfs were inert stellar corpses that slowly cool and fade away, but the new data tell a completely different story.

Typically, little M-dwarf stars—the most common type of star in the galaxy—are cold, quiet, and dim. Now a team of astronomers led by Edo Berger, a Carnegie-Princeton postdoctoral fellow, found one M-dwarf that doesn’t conform.

University of British Columbia astronomer Harvey Richer and UBC graduate student Saul Davis have discovered that white dwarf stars are born with a natal kick, explaining why these smoldering embers of Sun-like stars are found on the edge rather than at the centre of globular star clusters.

Astronomers have discovered white dwarf stars with pure carbon atmospheres. The discovery could offer a unique view into the hearts of dying stars.

When white dwarf stars explode, they leave behind a rapidly expanding cloud of 'stardust' known as a Type Ia supernova. These exploding events, which shine billions of times brighter than our sun, are all presumed to be extremely similar, and thus have been used extensively as cosmological reference beacons to trace distance and the evolution of the Universe.

The chemical fingerprint of a burned-out star indicates that Earth-like planets may not be rare in the universe and could give clues to what our solar system will look like when our sun dies and becomes a white dwarf star some five billion years from now.