Radiation from binary star systems and how that would affect a planet orbiting both stars

I am working on a solar system for a world where I intend to place my stories. This world should work by the laws of physics as we understand them so that, even though magic is a thing that exists in this world, the world doesn't need magical hand waving.

Here is info on the system that is immutable right now:

The solar system is a binary system made of up a main sequence star with a mass of .5 solar masses and a radius of 556,560 km and a white dwarf star with a mass of .5 solar masses and a radius of 9,500 km. This is orbited by double planet in which each planet is approximately the same mass as the Earth. This causes tidal forces of 3x that of the Moon on the Earth.

This brings me to my two questions:

1. Would slight accretion of matter onto the white dwarf via the corona of the main sequence star cause enough radiation that life would be impossible?
2. And if so, how would placing their orbital separation large enough that the white dwarf would be outside the corona of the other star affect the temperature of the planets as one of the stars would always be significantly closer to the planet than our sun is to us on Earth?

In reference to the second question to be outside of the corona, the stars would have to have a constant separation of at least 8,046,720 km with an orbit eccentricity of 0 meaning that one of the stars will always be between 0 km to 4,023,360 km closer which would mean at the higher scale about 2.7% closer to the planet than the Sun is. With that orbital separation they would have an orbital period of 4.8 days. Also that question assumes that having a total luminosity equal to the sun for the binary stars. So individually they would have about 2.6e26 for the main sequence star and 1.1e26 for the white dwarf.

posted almost 7 years ago

Adrienne‭

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