White Dwarf Collisions

Above: Two equal mass white dwarfs in a head-on collision.

For more information on this project, please read our paper in ApJ Letters:

Collisions of white dwarfs as a new progenitor channel for type Ia supernovae
Stephan Rosswog, Dan Kasen, James Guillochon, Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz. 2009, ApJL, 705, 128.

Movies from the FLASH simulation featured in the paper
(0.6 $M_\odot$ CO WD + 0.6 $M_\odot$ CO WD, head-on collision)

$\log_{10} P$, volume rendering. (MOV, 2.5 MB)
$\log_{10} \rho$, slice through center of mass of one of the WDs. (MP4, 816 KB)
$\log_{10} T$, volume rendering of one of the WDs. (MOV, 952 KB)

More movies and additional information can be found on Stephan’s webpage.