E-catalog        

Chapter One: The First Clues -- Chapter Two: “A Star the Size of the Earth? Absurd!” -- Chapter Three: Great Balls of Fire -- Chapter Four: Relativity, Wave-Particle Duality, and the Nature of the White Dwarfs -- Chapter Five: Star Power -- Chapter Six: Still Pretty Hot, for a Fading Old Star! -- Chapter Seven: Stalking the Wild White Dwarfs -- Chapter Eight: The Peculiar Spectra of White Dwarfs -- Chapter Nine: Interlude: Crossing the Digital Divide -- Chapter Ten: How to Make a White Dwarf -- Chapter Eleven: Diamonds in the Sky -- Chapter Twelve: “The Envelope, Please!” -- Chapter Thirteen: Leaping into Space -- Chapter Fourteen: Decoding the Spectra of the White Dwarfs -- Chapter Fifteen: The Secrets in the Spectra -- Chapter Sixteen: Understanding the White-Dwarf Menagerie -- Chapter Seventeen: Music of the Spheres -- Chapter Eighteen: The Whole Earth Telescope and Asteroseismology -- Chapter Nineteen: Magnetic Personalities -- Chapter Twenty: Odd Couples -- Chapter Twenty-One: White Dwarfs and the Nature of the Milky Way Galaxy -- Chapter twenty-two: White Dwarfs and Cosmology -- Appendices.

White dwarfs, each containing about as much mass as our Sun but packed into a volume about the size of Earth, are the endpoints of evolution for most stars. Thousands of these faint objects have now been discovered, though only a century ago only three were known. They are among the most common stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, and they have become important tools in understanding the universe. Yet a century ago only three white dwarfs were known.   The existence of these stars completely baffled the scientists of the day, and solving the mysteries of these strange objects required revolutionary advances in science and technology, including the development of quantum physics, the construction and utilization of large telescopes, the invention of the digital computer, and the ability to make astronomical observations from space.   This book tells the story of the growth in our understanding of white dwarf stars, set within the context of the relevant scientific and technological advances. Part popular science, part historical narrative, this book is authored by one of the astrophysicists who participated directly in uncovering some of the secrets of white dwarf stars.