Rare Cosmic Event Captured by Hubble Space Telescope: White Dwarf Feeds off Red Giant in Binary System
An extraordinary phenomenon was observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in a binary star system located about 3,400 light years away. The event involved a symbiotic system known as HM Sagittae (HM Sge), where a white dwarf star was feeding off a red giant companion star. The stolen material formed an accretion disk around the white dwarf, leading to a thermonuclear explosion on its surface, causing the system to brighten in a phenomenon referred to …