Chandra Release - December 4, 2018

Visual Description: ASASSN-16oh

An artist's illustration features a white dwarf binary system, ASASSN-16oh. The artist's concept is dominated by shades of bright orange, yellow and blue, with the white dwarf appearing as a bright white spot in the left of the image. The illustration is intended to capture the moment when the white dwarf is pulling material away from its companion star, a bright orange ball at right, creating a disk of gas and dust around it in blue and yellow. Astronomers detected a bright X-ray outburst from the white dwarf that represents new behavior from this type of star. A combination of X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Swift telescope, as well as optical data from ground-based telescopes, indicate that this star may be the fastest-growing white dwarf ever observed. In a process called accretion, the white dwarf pulls gas onto a large disk surrounding it, from a giant companion star. The material becomes hotter as it spirals toward the white dwarf, as shown in the illustration, and allows the white dwarf to accumulate mass.