Hi all,
I was gone for the weekend I don't have any texts or papers handy for
reference but the following link gives an elementary discussion of the
mass limits involved:
:wwwphysicsgmueduclassinfoastr...
'; Although it might seem at first that what might remain of a star after a
supernova outburst should be less than 14MSun and thus be a white dwarf,
this is not the case Even as far back as the 1930s a few astronomers felt
that the stellar remains were likely to be too massive to be a white
dwarf We now believe that all that remains of massive stars that have
undergone a supernova outburst is one or the other of two of the strangest
objects in all the cosmos If the stellar core remnant is less than 3MSun,
the collapse will halt at approximately the density of atomic nuclei with
a radius on the order of several tens of kilometers, producing an object
known as a neutron star. So help please if u can!!