It's Never a Dull Moment With Cataclysmic Variables

I am in the middle of getting a presentation together for Cataclysmic Variables (CV) and thought you might like a crash course in it as well. Cataclysmic variables are are binary systems that consist of an normal star and a white dwarf. They are typically small - a typical binary system is roughly the size of the Earth-Moon system - with an orbital period in the range 1-10 hrs. The companion star, a more or less normal star like our Sun, loses material onto the white dwarf by accretion. This part is kind of interesting  because the white dwarf  was at one time a regular schlep of a star. For few billion years or so cooked hydrogen into helium by fusion