Overview
- The MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope confirms the shock nebula is produced by the RXJ0528+2838 binary rather than a foreground cloud.
- The bow-shock morphology indicates a strong outflow colliding with interstellar gas that has persisted for roughly a thousand years.
- No accretion disk is detected around the white dwarf, contradicting standard models that link sustained outflows to disk-fed accretion.
- A strong magnetic field could channel transferred matter and help power the flow, yet estimates suggest it can sustain the shock for only a few hundred years.
- RXJ0528+2838 lies about 730 light-years away in a close binary with a sun-like companion; the phenomenon was first flagged in Isaac Newton Telescope images and detailed in a Nature Astronomy study.