Astronomers Discover Four Hidden White Dwarfs in Our Cosmic Neighborhood

Even in the most studied corner of the cosmos — the stars nearest our own Sun — the universe still conceals its dead. Astronomers from the University of Warwick and the University of Colorado Boulder have uncovered four white dwarf stars hiding within 65 light-years of Earth, each one masked by a brighter red dwarf companion that rendered it invisible to ordinary observation. The discovery required ultraviolet eyes and patient calibration, and it confirms what theory long suspected: our stellar neighborhood is more populated with stellar remnants than we could see. One of these systems, G 203-