Cooling white dwarfs in two massive collections of stars: the globular clusters M13 and M3 (IMAGE)
Caption
To investigate the physics underpinning white dwarf evolution, astronomers compared cooling white dwarfs in two massive collections of stars: the globular clusters M13 and M3. These two clusters share many physical properties such as age and metallicity, but the populations of stars which will eventually give rise to white dwarfs are different. This makes M13 and M3 together a perfect natural laboratory in which to test how different populations of white dwarfs cool.
Credit
Credits: ESA/Hubble, NASA, and G. Piotto et al.
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License
Public Domain