When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.An artist’s impression of a red dwarf with a white dwarf binary companion peekingout from behind. The diameters of the two stars are shown to scale. | Credit: Mark A.Garlick/University of WarwickAstronomers have spotted four dead star white dwarf stars playing a game of cosmic hide-and-seek, all four of which were hiding in the glares of red dwarf companion stars.This marks the first detection of white dwarfs existing in double star systems in our cosmic backyard. The white dwarfs are all located within around 65 light-years of Earth, and one of them is number nine in the top 10 closest white dwarfs to the solar system. White dwarfs are the type of stellar remnants left behind when stars around the size of the sun run out of fuel needed for nuclear fusion. This leads to their cores collapsing. The lack of fusion also means these stellar remnants cool and become dim. Thus, the light of much larger and brighter red dwarf stars is incredibly effective at hiding white dwarfs.AdvertisementAdvertisement”Nearby isolated white dwarfs are usually easy to find, but we couldn’t see these four stars directly in visible wavelengths because their red dwarf companions were drowning out their light,” team leader Mairi O’Brien of the University of Warwick in the UK said in a statement. “It’s a reminder that even in our own cosmic neighborhood, we can still find surprises if we look in the right way, at the right wavelengths.”Wobbles gave them awayThough astronomers have been diligently surveying our cosmic backyard for decades, white dwarfs are extremely good at remaining unseen. In fact, the only thing that gave these four hidden dead stars away? Curious “wobbles” caused in the motion of the stars th …
