Hubble finds Mass of White Dwarf

Chris Bradshaw writes "The mass of the nearest white dwarf star to Earth has been measured accurately for the first time. from the article: 'Sirius B is just 12,000 km (7,500 miles) in diameter, similar to Earth, but its mass is 98% that of the Sun. Studying Sirius B has been difficult because of the bright light coming from its neighbour Sirius A, the "Dog Star." The results, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, come from astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope.'"

Comments

Shame

[Anonymous Coward]

To bad they are going to plough it into earths atmosphere.

Hubble

[jurt1235]

Although NASA (or the US goverment, it is all politics) does not want to fund Hubble anymore, the telescope proves that it is valuable every time again. Astronomers just need more time with the equipment to take more readings of an object so that they can catch the details. Is it an idea that a commercial company adopts the Hubble telescope and rents the time on the telescope out again to different agencies around the globe? The price for the adoption could be the operational cost of keeping Hubble in orbit in working order.

Re:Hubble

[bhima]

What's worse is that, with the Hubble Origins Probe: http://www.pha.jhu.edu/hop/, an extremely high value, achievable alternative plan exists.

The shuttle is not necessary, nor is the not yet designed or built robotic servicing capability. The Hubble Origins Probe could be in orbit by the time the original fails, continuing and extending the original mission while the James Webb mission design, construction, and launch is completed.

Additionally, if the US ever figures out how to put people back in space, or really does design robotic satellite repair capability the is nothing preventing the Hubble Origins Probe from having an extremely long and productive life.

Re:Hubble

[Rich0]

Somebody mod parent up. Why does the hubble have to be an either-or solution (vs James Webb/etc)? Just make a new one and launch it - most of the costs of a space probe are for design, and we already have that done - just put the right mirror in, put the consumables in an easily serviced module, etc.

It has to be cheaper just to build another one than to build a robotic telescope repair system, and launch that!

Re:It'll be more interesting when they find..

[AccUser]

Already found it at the end of series 7...

Re:It's a shame...

[luvirini]

That is the way NASA works, ost of the money is spent on admninstration and other things only vaguely related to space and spaceresearch, thus they do not have money to maintain and build actual things.. but then.. NASA sees to be like most goverment agencies, mainly a jobs program and a way to divide contracts to the districts of congressmen. Too bad they lost their way somewhere....

Re:Interesting Background...

[MasterPlaid]

I think you're referring to cosmological redshift here - the redshift that makes objects farther away seem redder. You're correct that GR doesn't predict cosmological redshift a priori; cosmological redshift is caused by the expansion of the universe, and GR allows for an expanding universe, a contracting universe, or even a static universe. But GR does demand that gravitational redshift exist. This redshift is caused by the curvature of spacetime by matter which lies at the heart of GR itself, so graivtational redshift is tightly connected to GR, and its observation an important piece of evidence for the theory.