Green Star, Long Thought Impossible, Is Found Among the Dead Suns

WARWICK, ENGLAND — A white dwarf that would look green to a human observer has been identified for the first time, according to a paper in RAS Techniques and Instruments dated October 14, 2026. The report, as relayed by The Debrief, also describes stars in a wider palette of unexpected colors.

White dwarfs are the dense remnants of once Sun-like stars that burned out long ago. Many still glow white to blue because they remain very hot. The new work says they may also appear green, pink, cyan, yellow or purple.

The green specimen is catalogued as WD J1330+6435 and has an atmospheric temperature of about 4,000°C. Its hue is attributed to calcium, lithium and sodium, likely from rocky material drawn in from its planetary system. Dr. Mark Hollands of the University of Warwick, who led the work, says the sodium absorbs the orange part of the spectrum, leaving what he calls a "ghostly green glow."

The effect, the article explains, stems from the dense atmospheres of these stars. Carbon-rich atmospheres can yield pink or purple. Yellow may come from material deposited by asteroids and comets. Interactions of hydrogen and helium in cooler stars can produce cyan.

Observers should not expect a spectacle overhead. Most white dwarfs are too faint and distant for their colors to be seen by the eye, so the team used spectroscopy and a model of human color vision to work out how they would look. Of 151 white dwarfs within roughly 65 light-years of Earth, only five showed unusual colors. Professor Boris Gänsicke concluded that the average white dwarf "really is white."