{"id":240750,"date":"2026-07-13T20:05:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T01:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/dead-stars-in-our-cosmic-backyard-astronomers-spot-four-white-dwarfs-hiding-under-our-noses"},"modified":"2026-07-13T20:05:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T01:05:37","slug":"dead-stars-in-our-cosmic-backyard-astronomers-spot-four-white-dwarfs-hiding-under-our-noses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/dead-stars-in-our-cosmic-backyard-astronomers-spot-four-white-dwarfs-hiding-under-our-noses","title":{"rendered":"Dead stars in our cosmic backyard: Astronomers spot four white dwarfs hiding under our noses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/dead-stars-in-our-cosmic-backyard-astronomers-spot-four-white-dwarfs-hiding-under-our-noses2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Colorado Boulder have directly observed, for the first time, four white dwarfs in binary star systems in our nearby region of space. These stellar binaries are all within 65 light-years of Earth, and one contains the ninth-closest white dwarf to the sun.<\/p>\n<p>The four systems each include a red dwarf companion\u2014a larger, brighter star\u2014making the systems appear to be single-star systems. The new results, <a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/mnras\/article-lookup\/doi\/10.1093\/mnras\/stag1195\" target=\"_blank\">published in <i>MNRAS<\/i><\/a>, show that each of these nearby red dwarfs hosts a hidden white dwarf companion.<\/p>\n<p>First author Dr. Mairi O\u2019Brien, a research fellow at the University of Warwick, said, \u201cNearby isolated white dwarfs are usually easy to find, but we couldn\u2019t see these four stars directly in visible wavelengths because their red dwarf companions were drowning out their light. It\u2019s a reminder that even in our own cosmic neighborhood, we can still find surprises if we look in the right way, at the right wavelengths.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Colorado Boulder have directly observed, for the first time, four white dwarfs in binary star systems in our nearby region of space. These stellar binaries are all within 65 light-years of Earth, and one contains the ninth-closest white dwarf to the sun. The four systems [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}