Stellar Corpses: White Dwarfs, Novae, Neutron Stars, and Pulsars

This is the tenth lecture series of my complete online introductory undergraduate college course. This video series was used at William Paterson University and CUNY Hunter in online classes as well as to supplement in-person course material. Notes and links are present in the videos at the start of each lecture.

0:00:01 - White Dwarf Stars
1:07:38 - Novae and Supernovae Type Ia
1:44:23 - Neutron Stars and Pulsars
2:23:33 - Pulsars, X-ray Binaries and Kilonovas

In this lecture series, I talk about the end states of stars. The amazing white dwarfs and neutron stars. White Dwarfs are fascinating end states of Solar-mass (or slightly bigger) stars. Sirius "b" is among the closest known and we know many things about these oddball planet-sized stars from the Dog Star's dog. Next, if we combine the common nature of white dwarfs and the fact that most stars are in binary (or more) systems, then we can see that as stars die, they can interact. Novae and Type 1a supernovae are the result. White dwarf stars can cause sudden outbursts called novae, and even do a special kind of supernova. Then we go to some of the most amazing objects in the universe that are still things are neutron stars. Often looked at in astronomy as the thing on the way to black holes, neutron stars are the most extreme objects in the universe composed of what we might still call normal matter. Black holes are another thing. These boundary objects have wild properties and have extreme effects on their surroundings. Forged in the instantaneous fire of a core-collapse supernova, they are awesome objects. Finally, neutron stars make themselves known by their spin. They create a huge magnetic dynamo that powers the emissions seen in X-rays and gamma-rays. The result is a pulsar or magnetar. The Crab Nebula is the classic example of these amazing objects. They can also do similar thing like we saw with novae, but with much more extreme results: the kilonovae.