Explanation:
How can two stars create such a strange and intricate structure?
Most stars are members of
multiple-star systems.
Some stars are members of close
binary systems
where material from one star swirls around the other in an
accretion disk.
Only a handful of stars, however, are members of an
intermediate polar, a system featuring a
white dwarf star with a
magnetic field that significantly pushes out the inner
accretion disk,
only allowing material to fall down its magnetic poles.
Shown above
is an artist's depiction of an
intermediatepolar system, also known as a
DQ Hercules system.
The foreground white dwarf is so close to the normal star that it
strips away its outer atmosphere.
As the white dwarf spins, the columns of infalling gas rotate with it.
The name
intermediate polar
derives from observations of emitted light
polarized
at a level intermediate to non-disk binary systems known as
polars.
Intermediate polars
are a type of
cataclysmic variable star system.
