Talk:White dwarf

"A white dwarf is as bright as the full moon"

@Mapa1212 the trivia is only accurate for the small neutron stars; avoid adding trivia information into Wikipedia articles as they may be inaccurate. Use numbers whenever possible. Pancakes321 (talk) 09:06, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

@Lithopsian sorry but bothering you, but I had not actually done research on the exact values of white dwarf luminosity, and had only fetched the applied vallue, which is mostly correct for a 6e5km radii ball with temperatures of ~18000k to ~5800k (Sirius B, being an exceptionally* hot example is treated as an exception), was not backed by actual data and was only taken from a Reddit post.

Would you be so kind as to do me a service of fetching some data to back upmy value? Pancakes321 (talk) 11:56, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

White dwarf luminosities cover a huge range, and I mean huge. Any single value is just about meaningless. Add to that, no known white dwarf has anywhere near a luminosity as low as the full moon. The range you put in is approximately correct, but there is no reference. A more complete range might be 0.00001 – 0.1 L_☉, although there are relatively few white dwarfs at either extreme of that range.

Perhaps it would make sense to list a (cited) peak luminosity followed by "or less", since the lower limit just depends on the instrument. Praemonitus (talk) 16:49, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

References

Reorganization and cruft

I made a bunch of changes today, surely some rough edges are left over. But the article has duplication and overlap. More work is needed.

• History has some concept content mixed in.
• History material is sprinkle around inconsistently.
• Intro does not have a coherent section on binaries.

Johnjbarton (talk) 03:15, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Table of densities

The table of densities compares objects using two different definitions of density. For black holes the mass is divided by the volume of a sphere at the Schwarzschild radius. For all other objects the mass is divided by the volume of a sphere enclosing the object. These two forms are not comparable and including black holes here detracts from the key message of the table, that white dwarf stars are more dense than rocks and stars but less than neutron stars. Thus I removed the black hole rows. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:37, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm okay with that as I'm not even sure what density means in the context of a black hole. Praemonitus (talk) 04:13, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

What is this?

Stellar remnant mostly composed of electron degenerated matter? What the eff is that? Use normal words at the start of the page! Tell people the smarty pants stuff when you've made it make sense already! ~2026-11551-37 (talk) 14:37, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

 Done Johnjbarton (talk) 02:54, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

Formation vague explanation

Quote "A star SHEDS its outer layers" a star doesn't have super powers ... We need a when , a why and a how for this action of shedding. Is it sudden or slow and what causes it? It is not rocket science. ~2026-19395-92 (talk) 11:52, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

You're right, it should at least include a sentence or two about mass loss during the AGB stage. Praemonitus (talk) 21:26, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

I gave a try, please review. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:04, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

The description of the asymptotic giant branch is now more accurate. The description still skips pretty dramatically from mass loss to planetary nebula and core remnant Lithopsian (talk) 00:00, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I think brevity is helpful here. In principle the following section go into more detail but segmented by mass. Ideally the first paragraph would outline the general scheme and end with "the details of formation depend upon the progenitor mass." (as discussed in the following subsections). Someday.... Johnjbarton (talk) 23:11, 15 April 2026 (UTC)