Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Calamida and K. Sahu (STScI), and the SWEEPS Science Team

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected for the first time a population of white dwarfs embedded in the hub of our Milky Way galaxy. The Hubble images are the deepest, most detailed study of the galaxy's central bulge of stars. The smoldering remnants of once-vibrant stars can yield clues to our galaxy's early construction stages that happened long before Earth and our sun formed. Hubble uncovered extremely faint and hot white dwarfs. This is a sample of 4 out of the 70 brightest white dwarfs spied by Hubble in the Milky Way's bulge. Astronomers picked them out based on their faintness, blue-white color, and motion relative to our sun. The numbers in the inset images correspond to the white dwarfs' location in the larger Hubble view.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2015/news-2015-38

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

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