Chandrasekhar limit

US: (shän′drə sā′kär)

WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2025

Chan•dra•se′khar lim′it  (shän′drə sā′kär), [Astron.]

1. Astronomy the mass limit above which a star has too much mass to become a white dwarf after gravitational collapse, approximately 1.44 solar masses.

• after U.south, southern. astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (born 1910), who formulated it 1975–80

Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers::

Chandrasekhar limit noun

1. the upper limit to the mass of a white dwarf, equal to 1.44 solar masses. A star having a mass above this limit will continue to collapse to form a neutron star

Etymology: 20th Century: named after S. Chandrasekhar, who calculated it