Posted on 02/16/2026 1:04:56 PM PST by MtnClimber
Explanation: How is RXJ0528+2838 creating such shock waves? A recently discovered white dwarf star, the farther left of the two largest white spots, RXJ0528+2838, was found 730 light-years away from Earth. Most stars, when done fusing nuclei in their cores for energy, become red giant stars, the cores of which live on as faint dense white dwarfs that slowly cool down for the rest of time. White dwarfs are so dense that the only thing that stops them from collapsing further is quantum mechanics. In about 5 billion years, our Sun will become a white dwarf, too. The featured image, obtained with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, shows unexplained bow shocks around RXJ0528+2838, similar to the bow wave of water around a fast-moving ship. Astronomers don’t yet know what is powering these shocks, which have existed for at least 1,000 years. The red, green and blue colors represent trace amounts of glowing hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen gas.
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Gary Coleman doesnt qualify....
Wow.
Wow.
Anthropogenic caused white dwarfism! We are all going to die. That is- unless, you send me your cash.
No star just sits there. The entire galaxy is rotating. Could be the star is colliding with gas clouds that are not moving in the same direction.
That looks pretty darn fabulous. Nice! 👍
I see your argument, but I’m not sure. It would push gas ahead of it, but I’d expect the bow shock to be not much larger than the star itself. It isn’t fusing, so there should be no large heliosphere around it to push gas away over a large diameter spanning many AU. Maybe it has a strong magnetic field and that’s doing it as it moves through ionized gas?
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