‘White’ dwarf stars can be purple, pink and even green, surprising new study finds

Stellar cores called white dwarfs come in an astonishing array of colors, including what scientists say is the first known green star and the reddest star ever found, new research reveals.

A white dwarf star is the dense, cooling core that remains after a low- to medium-mass star runs out of fuel. The new study, published Thursday (Oct. 15) in the journal RAS Techniques and Instruments, shows that white dwarfs come in far more colors than their name suggests.

White dwarf stars got their moniker because the first known examples glowed in either white or pale blue. The new study, however, suggests that “white” dwarfs also emit visible-light colors like pink, green, cyan, purple and yellow.

“Most stars, including most white dwarfs, behave like ‘perfect radiators,’ so their colour is set almost entirely by temperature. But nobody had really looked into what else might be possible for white dwarfs,” Mark Hollands, an astronomer at the University of Warwick in the U.K. and first author of the study, said in a statement. “It turns out these incredibly dense stars can produce colours nobody expected, and some of them genuinely surprised me.”

The variety of colors is possible due to white dwarfs’ densities compared with main-sequence stars, the study suggests. Cooler white dwarfs have a density of about 1 gram per cubic centimeter, much like flowing water on Earth. The density of these white dwarfs is also millions of times denser than the sun’s visible surface, or photosphere, leading to unusual conditions.

“Any trace elements that may be present, such as carbon, calcium and sodium, interact with the surrounding dense helium plasma and absorb light across a wider range of colours than they would at lower densities,” the researchers said in a statement. “This shifts a star’s colour away from the orange, white and blue [typical] of a perfect radiator.”

White dwarfs are far away and small, making it difficult to verify their color. So, in the new study, astronomers inferred the colors using spectra, the distinctive chemical fingerprints produced by stars’ light. The team analyzed the spectra within a model of color vision that the human eye can see, making the color pop out.

Scientists found that carbon-rich white dwarfs tend to be purple or pink, while those that contain debris from asteroids or comets are usually yellower. Cyan or pale-blue white dwarfs occur when hydrogen and helium molecules strike each other in very dense atmospheres.

The team also discovered WD J1330+6435 — a green star that contains rocky material. The green comes from the additional elements of calcium, lithium and sodium in the star’s atmosphere, creating a unique “chartreuse green appearance” that would be visible to the human eye, if we could see it up close.

“The traces of sodium in the atmosphere of this white dwarf absorb the orange part of the spectrum, leaving behind a ghostly green glow,” Hollands explained, adding that the one-of-a-kind green star “feels like something out of science fiction.” The team also discovered what is likely the reddest star ever found. This white dwarf, called WD J1011+2845, is located roughly 48 light-years from our planet. It has carbon closer to its surface — because the element is being lifted from the interior, due to strong convection currents — that is bending the star’s light. This process is making a “deep salmon-pink glow” because the carbon molecules are obstructing the star’s other wavelengths.

Overall, in the sample of stars studied — 151 white dwarfs within 65 light-years of Earth — about 1 in 30 white dwarfs glowed in a color other than white. This could mean there are far more colorful stellar remnants littering the universe than anyone anticipated.