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29 September 2026 2518 stories tracked

Glossary · Stars & Supernovae

Chandrasekhar limit

1.4 solar masses: the most a white dwarf can weigh before it cannot hold itself up.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar worked it out at nineteen, on a boat to England, and was publicly ridiculed for it by the most eminent astrophysicist of the day. He was right. Above about 1.4 solar masses the electron pressure holding a white dwarf up fails, and the star either detonates as a Type Ia supernova or collapses further into a neutron star. Because the threshold is the same everywhere the explosions are near-identical in brightness, which is what makes them the standard candles that revealed dark energy.

Related terms

Magnetar A neutron star with a magnetic field a thousand trillion times Earth's. Supernova (Type Ia and Type II) Two unrelated ways for a star to explode, useful for two entirely different reasons. The main sequence The long, stable middle age a star spends fusing hydrogen in its core. Hertzsprung–Russell diagram The single plot that organises everything about stars.

Questions

What is Chandrasekhar limit?

1.4 solar masses: the most a white dwarf can weigh before it cannot hold itself up.

Why does it matter?

Above about 1.4 solar masses the electron pressure holding a white dwarf up fails, and the star either detonates as a Type Ia supernova or collapses further into a neutron star. Because the threshold is the same everywhere the explosions are near-identical in brightness, which is what makes them the standard candles that revealed dark energy.

Written and computed by . Corrections and errors to hello@cantinalabs.dev.