UD astronomers coordinating international observatories in white-dwarf watch

Shown at Mt. Cuba Astronomical Observatory in Greenville, Del., resident astronomer Judi Provencal, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at UD and director of the Delaware Asteroseismic Research Center, is... Click here for more information.

Judi Provencal is star-struck, but not so much by the glitz and glam of Hollywood.

You have to look heavenward through a telescope to see the object of her fascination--to pale stars called white dwarfs, their brilliance faded because all of their nuclear fuel has been burned up.

A white dwarf is a star that is “dying,” cooling down in the twilight of its life. It's what the sun will become in about 4 billion years, according to Provencal.

Starting Wednesday, March 26, Provencal--who is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Delaware, director of the Delaware Asteroseismic Research Center (DARC), and resident astronomer at Mt. Cuba Astronomical Observatory in Greenville, Del.--will be coordinating some of the world's largest telescopes in a three-week-long “international observing run,” focusing on a white dwarf known as IU Vir in the constellation Virgo. The star's coordinates are 14012-1446.

The observing run will be conducted by the Whole Earth Telescope (WET), a worldwide network of observatories that work together to obtain continuous measurements of “pulsating” stars. Such stars change their shape or surface temperature as waves of energy travel through them. They are the basis of asteroseismology, a fledgling science that examines “starquakes” just as seismologists monitor earthquakes.

WET was initiated in 1986 by astronomers at the University of Texas and later was transferred to Iowa State University. Three years ago, the coordination of WET moved to the University of Delaware through the leadership of Provencal and Harry Shipman, the Annie Jump Cannon Professor of Astronomy at UD, and with the financial support of the Crystal Trust Foundation.

The upcoming observing run will involve more than 20 of WET's observatories, including one of the largest telescopes on the planet--the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) in Sutherland, South Africa. It has a 10-by-11-meter (32-by-36 foot) hexagonal, segmented mirror and can record stars, galaxies and quasars a billion times too faint to be seen by the unaided eye--“as faint as a candle flame at the distance of the moon,” according to its Web site.