White Dwarf (star type)

This article covers the stellar type White Dwarf, a stellar remnant left behind by smaller stars when they exhaust their fuel.

• Please see Degenerate Dwarf section at article Star.
• For the magazine see White Dwarf (magazine)

Description (Specifications)

The White Dwarf is one of three main types of stellar remnant:

1. White Dwarf
2. Neutron Star
3. Black Hole

Note that the term "White Dwarf" is a colloquialism for this object, which is more properly refered to as a "Degenerate Dwarf". Though many (if not most) of these objects are in fact white to blue-white in coloration, their hue can range down thru the spectrum from yellow-white to light pinkish orange, depending on how old they are and how long they have in fact been cooling. Those which are currently bluish-white to white in hue will one day cool down to the latter color-temperatures as they age. Such objects will eventually cool down sufficiently that they will no longer emit radiation in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, becoming "Black Dwarfs" trillions of years from now.

The White Dwarf is made from electron-degenerate matter left after the fuel in a star has fused and where the resulting material is not sufficiently compressed by gravity to fuse on its own. Proto-Stars that are too light to fuse hydrogen in the first-place are Brown Dwarfs.

White Dwarfs can be found in many sectors throughout charted space and are generally not of interest but when closely paired with other stars or stellar remnants can be a danger to navigation due to some interaction effects. e.g. Formation System.

White Dwarfs have considerable mass despite their small size because of their density (about 10⁶ kg/m³, or 1 tonne per cubic centimeter). Their considerable mass (and temperature) makes landing impossible for any Imperial ship, and close approach at low speed can result in permanent capture. They have noticeable effects on jump-space and extend jump-shadows just like any other physical body.

History & Background (Dossier)

White Dwarfs have been known-of since about a century before spaceflight. They are relatively common.

All main sequence stars of classes A,F,G,K or early M (and the lighter ("late") class B) will become White Dwarfs after progressing through the "Giant Phase" on the horizontal branch of the HR Diagram, although none of those at the lowest end of that range have yet reached that stage. The lowest mass M-type stars will also eventually transform into White Dwarfs, but will take much longer to do so, only after having cycled through the majority of their Hydrogen fuel, transforming temporarily into an "evolutionary blue dwarf" before transforming directly into a White Dwarf and shutting down nuclear-burning without ever entering the Giant Phase.

No White Dwarf can be more massive than about 1.44 M_Sol. More massive objects will either form Neutron Stars or Black Holes.

References & Contributors (Sources)

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at White_dwarf. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of Wikipedia is available under the Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Marc Miller. Scouts (Game Designers Workshop, 1983), 21-45.
• Author: BackworldTraveller