NASA Volunteer Discovers Oldest and Coldest White Dwarf Star

A citizen scientist working for NASA has discovered the oldest and coldest star known as the white dwarf. It is a remnant equal the size of the earth and but it is a dead sun, like a star, surrounded by dust and debris. Astronomers believe that this could be the first known white dwarf with multiple dust rings. The findings were recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

The discovery of the star, which has been named LSPM J0207+3331 or J0207 has increased the curiosity of the researchers to reconsider the models of planetary systems, which could help us know about the distant future of our solar system.

Melina Thévenot, who volunteered to help NASA to find out the brown dwarfs by analyzing grainy images of candidate stars taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope, which was a part of the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project finally discovered the star. Melina was searching through the European Space Agency’s Gaia archives for brown dwarfs, when she noticed J0207.

John Debes, an astronomer associated with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, says, “This white dwarf is so old that whatever process is feeding material into its rings must operate on billion-year timescales”.

Debes, who is now working with the NASA-led Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project also says, “Most of the models scientists have created to explain rings around white dwarfs only work well up to around 100 million years, so this star is really challenging our assumptions of how planetary systems evolve”.

At present the white dwarf, J0207 is located around 145 light years away in the constellation of Capricornus. According to the natural process, the white dwarfs cool slowly as they age. The team of Debes has calculated and found that J0207 is about three billion years old, which is based on temperature over 5,800 degrees Celsius. 

Earlier dust disks and rings were observed surrounding the white dwarfs, which is about one-third of the J0207’s age. The star may have multiple rings. Debes and his colleague suggest that there could be two distinct components, one thin ring of dust and debris at the point where the star’s tides break up the asteroids and a wider ring, which is closer to the white dwarf. 

After the discovery now more exploration is needed and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope may help astronomers to solve the riddle surrounding the ring’s constituent parts.

Citizen scientist Melina Thévenot is also an author from Germany and Planet 9 project is a citizen science project launched two years ago, which calls upon space enthusiasts to explore the other world.