Question

The following questions use the mass and radius of a white dwarf (M=1.0 solar mass, R=6000 km) and neutron star (M=1.5 solar mass, R=12 km). 7. Consider an object with a temperature of T=107 K, and an X-ray luminosity of 1030 Watts. What radius would this object have? Is this object more likely a white dwarf or a neutron star?

Answer 1

Here we have been given the Mass and Radii for white dwarf and a neutron star thus we just need to find these values for the object we are considering and then compare these values to find the desired result.

The relationship between luminosity (in watts), Radius (in m) and Temperature of a body (in K) is given by following relationship:

where S is the stefan boltzman constant. Now putting the values we get:

Comparing the values we can see that this object is more likely to be a neutron star.