Overview
- ESO’s VLT/MUSE mapped a pronounced bow shock around the nearby white dwarf RXJ0528+2838 about 730 light-years away.
- The binary shows no accretion disk, contradicting expectations for systems that drive such outflows.
- The bow shock’s size and morphology indicate continuous strong ejection for roughly 1,000 years.
- Emission-line diagnostics tie the structure to the binary itself and rule out a coincident interstellar cloud.
- Researchers propose magnetically channeled mass transfer as a candidate driver, but the measured field could sustain the shock only for a few hundred years, prompting calls for further observations including with the ELT.