How would our skies look if our sun was a white dwarf instead?

What I'm using your information for:

My planet is small, has a thicker atmosphere than earth and it's orbiting a white dwarf. The main reason I chose it to be a white dwarf is that I read somewhere that these would take much longer to cool than a regular star, because they have a much smaller surface. The reason I need the star for such a long time is, that I want to communicate how unlikely it is that an intelligent alien species similar to ours would evolve. The time between humanity and my alien species should feel like an eternity. At the same time my species is one of many thousand similar ones that lived on that planet one after another. The whole ecosystem stayed roughly the same and just this one species gets replaced every few 100'000 years. -This process should go on for as long as possible.

What I want to know:

The main reason I won't do my research without you is, that I'm really really bad at it: The white dwarf I'm "looking for" should burn its energy as slowly as possible. That's why my planet will orbit quite closely to it, still allowing my ecosystem to exist. It should also have the biggest mass possible and look the same over a long time which (I think) means, that its spectral light will rather be white than blue? -Here's where it ends for me.

• Does the light of the white dwarf I need look differently from each angle than that of our sun? How?

Edit regarding the comments:

To L.Dutch. Yes, it's tidally locked.

To AlexP. I could imagine that dead ends in evolutionary lines are possible, if the conditions are right. Our way of evolution isn't the only possible anyways. I even wanted to explain parts of it: There's a bacteria-like species that lives in almost every organism. Rumors tell that an intelligent species that lived long ago had developed them to make certain species go extinct for ever. They support the organs of all rather complex species, also their breeding chambers... To your second comment: I never thought about it this way... Species evolving that have comparable sight to us will see their suns color as white anyways. Everything else would depend on the atmosphere and the weather... Thanks.

To Alexander: Exactly.

To Stephen G: I understand what you mean. Why would someone care about the sun, when the main problems are asteroids, the rotation of a planet, the planet cooling down, etc? - There's another bigger planet orbiting the white dwarf blocking/pulling asteroids away. The planet will be heated by the same other planet whenever it comes by, like Titan, just less often. The species aren't like the ones we have on earth. Most of them are able to live for thousands of earth-years and they don't reproduce how "we" do. (would take long to explain) Everything else can be explained by luck or "not talking about it", I guess. The longer the sun stays the same, the more likely it is that there's a very long window where also everything else is in place for the stagnating environment I want my stories to take place in.

to cmm: thanks. Now there's only the "main question" remaining.

to TheDyingOfLight: "universe sandbox" looks really interesting. Thanks for the link.

to Mike Scott: Thanks! Such info was exactly what I was hoping for. Hopefully I'll find a way/an example to explain this...

posted almost 5 years ago

Anton Berkhoff‭

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