Astronomers Discover New Class of Pulsating Star

KentuckyFC writes "It doesn't happen very often but astronomers have discovered a new class of pulsating white dwarf. The work began last year when the Sloan Digital Sky Survey found a few exotic white dwarf stars with carbon atmospheres. A mathematical model of these stars showed that in some circumstances the dwarfs could pulsate as the carbon was cycled through the atmosphere by convection. Now a few days observation of one of these stars has shown that it does actually pulsate as predicted."

Comments

Re:"A fly in the ointment"

[trolltalk.com]

they discovered nine of them.

... and the first seven dwarfs are named Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sneezy, Bashful, Sleepy, and Dopey.

we're saving the smurf names for the blue dwarfs.