{"id":555,"date":"2026-08-19T10:57:02","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T14:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/?p=555"},"modified":"2026-08-19T10:57:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T14:57:02","slug":"the-outburst-in-gd-1212","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/2026\/08\/19\/the-outburst-in-gd-1212\/","title":{"rendered":"The outburst in GD 1212"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/buwd\/files\/2026\/08\/oGD1212.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"446\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-525\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A giant flux outburst in the cool pulsating white dwarf GD 1212, as seen in the extended Kepler mission (from <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2606.09987\">Hermes et al. 2026<\/a>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In August 2026, a manuscript led by BUWD PI JJ Hermes (<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2606.09987\">Hermes, Bell, Dublin, et al. 2026<\/a><\/strong>) was published exploring an extreme example of an &#8220;outburst&#8221; in the pulsating white dwarf GD 1212. The outburst was likely powered by a parametric resonance, where mode energy from the stellar pulsations rapidly transferred from driven to damped modes; those waves broke at the surface, heating the photosphere by 850 K in just a few hours, getting nearly 20% brighter overall. Some day in a few billion years our Sun will probably undergo something similar. The manuscript has been accepted in <a href=\"https:\/\/ui.adsabs.harvard.edu\/abs\/2026ApJ..1006..185H\/abstract\">The Astrophysical Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In August 2026, a manuscript led by BUWD PI JJ Hermes (Hermes, Bell, Dublin, et al. 2026) was published exploring an extreme example of an &#8220;outburst&#8221; in the pulsating white dwarf GD 1212. The outburst was likely powered by a parametric resonance, where mode energy from the stellar pulsations rapidly transferred from driven to damped [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15801,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15801"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":556,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions\/556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}