Binary stars as a research area encompass the observational, theoretical, and computational study of gravitationally bound stellar pairs, focusing on their formation, orbital dynamics, mass transfer, and evolutionary pathways. This field investigates how binarity affects stellar structure, nucleosynthesis, angular momentum evolution, and endpoints such as white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole binaries. It also includes characterization of spectroscopic, eclipsing, and astrometric binaries, derivation of fundamental stellar parameters from orbital solutions, and modeling of interaction phenomena such as accretion, common-envelope evolution, and mergers, which are crucial for understanding supernova progenitors, gravitational-wave sources, and the statistical properties of stellar populations.
A large team of astronomers and astrophysicists affiliated with several institutions in China has discovered a binary star system, where one of the stars is a millisecond pulsar and the other is made mostly of helium. In ...
A new study published in Nature Astronomy, led by Dr. Jie Yu, from the Australian National University, reveals that stars in close binary systems—pairs of stars orbiting each other at close range—can exhibit unexpectedly ...
Astronomy
May 23, 2025
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Co-paired stars, or stars that travel together, can provide insights into processes that other stars can't. Differences in their brightness, orbits, and chemical composition can hint at different features, and scientists ...
Astronomy
May 22, 2025
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A small international team of astronomers has confirmed that a binary star system with an odd signal has a companion—a planet roughly twice the size of Jupiter, which may have emerged from a circumbinary orbit or from a second-generation ...
Tracking the sources of photons is a hobby of many astrophysicists. Some types of photons are tied so closely to particular phenomena that tracking their sources would help answer some larger questions in astrophysics itself.
Astronomy
May 16, 2025
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Apples-to-apples comparisons in the distant universe are hard to come by. Whether the subject is dwarf galaxies, supermassive black holes, or "hot Jupiters," astronomers can spend months or years searching for comparable ...
Astronomy
May 14, 2025
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There is a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, and it's not alone. There is also likely a forest of binary black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs. All of these emit gravitational waves as they gradually ...
Astronomy
May 8, 2025
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A study published in Physical Review Letters outlines a new approach for extracting information from binary systems by looking at the entire posterior distribution instead of making decisions based on individual parameters.
Using NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), Indian astronomers have observed an X-ray binary system designated SXP 138. Results of the NuSTAR observations, published March 26 on thearXiv pre-print server, ...
Astronomers have discovered a planet that orbits at a 90-degree angle around a rare pair of strange stars—a real-life 'twist' on the fictional twin suns of Star Wars hero Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine.
Astronomy
Apr 16, 2025
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