Chandrasekhar limit

Summary

The Chandrasekhar limit is the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star. These stars resist gravitational collapse primarily through electron degeneracy pressure, compared to main sequence stars, which resist collapse through thermal pressure. The Chandrasekhar limit is the mass above which electron degeneracy pressure in the star's core is insufficient to balance the star's own gravitational self-attraction. The value of the Chandrasekhar limit depends upon the ratio of the number of electrons to nucleons in the star. For small stars this ratio is around 1/2 and the limit is about 1.44 M☉. The limit was named after Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar who won the 1983 Nobel prize together with William Alfred Fowler for work on stellar models.