QS Telescopii (original) (raw)

QS Telescopii is a faint, well-studied binary star system in the southern constellation Telescopium. It is composed of a white dwarf and main sequence donor star, locked into a close, circular orbit facing one another. Known as polars, material from the donor star does not form an accretion disk around the white dwarf, but rather streams directly onto it. This is due to the presence of the white dwarf's strong magnetic field. The pair undergo frequent shifts between a high and low accretion states, and it shifts between single and double accretion poles. The main pole is partially self-eclipsing.