maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star, approximately 1.4 solar masses From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Chandrasekhar limit is the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star.[1] Building on work by others, the Indian physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar worked on the calculation.[2] He published series of papers between 1931 and 1935.[3] The Chandrasekhar limit is about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun.[4]
The Chandrasekhar limit is the mass above which electron degeneracy pressure in the star's core is not enough to balance the star's own gravitational self-attraction.[5] Then, white dwarfs with masses over the limit would gravitationally collapse into a neutron star or black hole. However, white dwarfs usually explode before they undergo collapse. Those with masses under the limit remain stable as white dwarfs.
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