Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics

Now that is one hot dog! 🌭

Canis Major and Canis Minor are two constellations visible in the night sky. Canis Major contains the brightest star in our night sky, Sirius, AKA the Dog Star.

I bet you didn’t know that Sirius A has a dimmer, tinier sidekick called Sirius B. These two stars are part of a binary system, orbiting the same center of mass. Sirius B is a white dwarf, a star that was once similar to our Sun but has run out of nuclear fuel and is gradually collapsing in on itself.

At LASP, we study the life cycles of these far-away stars to understand the evolution of binary star systems and learn more about the complex development of our cosmos!

So yes, we do study the ‘hot dogs’ of space- but not the kind you’d want to eat. ⭐

📸: NOIRLab, NASA