Dying Red

Dying Red Aka WD 0137-349

-- Union System with two stars and two planets. Upward Sector Colonized and claimed for the Union in 4002 by a Wurgus Clan. The two planets are called Rythu Go and Rytho Ha.

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Ha and are Wurgus Ship Yards and material processing and storage depots. The System is accessible via a System Gate-Hub Station Red Door. Civilian traffic must pass through Red Door for inspection. Only approved and verified Union registries may proceed and approach and land on Rythu Go. Rytho Ha is off limits. The Reasons are Classified. Six Wings of Wolfcraft and four permanently assigned Super Cruisers enforce these rules.

WD 0137-349

The WD 0137-349 system is an odd ultra close binary approximately 200 light years away. The smaller but more massive component is a small massive white dwarf, formerly the core region of a normal star. The larger component is a close low mass brown dwarf which orbits its white dwarf companion in a tight two hour orbit. It glows with dull reddish color, and largely from this angle the brown dwarf is illuminated by the white dwarf.

The main distinction of the binary is the fact that the brown dwarf survived its companion star's red giant phase, and in fact after being temporarily swallowed the brown dwarf plunged through the red giant's outer layers as its orbit decayed. This heated and shredded the gas layers, throwing them out into space, while leaving behind the core and the still intact brown dwarf.

WD 0137-349 is a binary star 300 light years from Earth. It is composed of a white dwarf and a brown dwarf in orbit around it. The orbital period is 2 hours. The orbit of the brown dwarf is slowly decaying.

It is thought that the red giant phase of the current white dwarf was dramatically shortened from around 100 million years on average, to a few decades, because of the actions of the brown dwarf. The brown dwarf was swallowed into the envelope of the red giant, and hastened the expulsion of matter during this phase by rapidly heating gas and accreting a portion of it. During this phase, the gas drag also decreased the orbit of the brown dwarf.

In about 1.4 billion years, it is thought that the orbit of the brown dwarf will have decayed sufficiently to allow the white dwarf to draw matter away and accrete it on its surface, leading to a recurrent nova.

As of 2006, this brown dwarf is the smallest object known to survive being engulfed by a red giant phase. Previously, only red dwarfs had been known to survive being enveloped during a red giant phase. It is thought that objects smaller than 20 Jupiter masses would have evaporated.