Jan van Roestel

The white dwarf ZTF J1944+4557 plays hide-and-seek: its light dims by 30% every 4 hours 58 minutes. The dust particles here are no smaller than 0.2 microns and they dim all colors of the spectrum equally. But the strangest twist: the pattern of eclipses changes faster than the orbit, and sometimes a

A pair of white dwarfs whirls in a deadly dance: one star steals helium from its neighbor, spinning up a glowing disk. The orbit shrinks, energy leaves as gravitational waves. The rate of approach has been measured — the future LISA detector will catch the signal in four years.