Most of the action in my novel Star Dragon takes place in the SS Cygni star system. SS Cygni is a cataclysmic variable or CV, in which a white dwarf star is in orbit with a main sequence star, and the gravity from the white dwarf is pull material off the other star to form an accretion disk. I've just become aware of a really nifty piece of software called FITDisk written by some CV scientists (Wood, Dolence, and Simpson) that simulates, using magnetohydrodynamic code, CVs with a graphical display of the results. It apprently runs with a GUI on windows, and I'm going to check it out. The webpage is at www.astro.fit.edu/cv/fitdisk.html.
Posted by Mike at November 15, 2005 4:08 PM