Astronomers find a 'cataclysmic' pair of stars with the shortest orbit yet
October 5, 2022
by Jennifer Chu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Nearly half the stars in our galaxy are solitary like the sun. The other half comprises stars that circle other stars, in pairs and multiples, with orbits so tight that some stellar systems could fit between Earth and the moon.
Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have discovered a stellar binary, or pair of stars, with an extremely short orbit, appearing to circle each other every 51 minutes. The system seems to be one of a rare class of binaries known as a "cataclysmic variable," in which a star similar to our sun orbits tightly around a white dwarf—a hot, dense core of a burned-out star.
