Google honors astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar with new Doodle

Oct. 19 (UPI) -- Google is celebrating what would have been the 107th birthday of astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar with a new Doodle.

Google's homepage displays a short animated clip that features Chandrasekhar's likeness examining the sun before a scale is used to weigh the sun against a star that is represented with a heavy bottle.

The scale pays homage to Chandrasekhar's most important contribution, The Chandrasekhar limit.

"The limit explains that when a star's mass is lighter than 1.4 times that of the sun, it eventually collapses into a denser stage called a "white dwarf." When heavier than 1.4, a white dwarf can continue to collapse and condense, evolving into a black hole or a supernova explosion," Google writes of his find that is described as helping with "our understanding of stars and their evolution."

Google also lists the various awards Chandrasekhar won including the National Medal of Science, the Draper Medal of the US National Academy of Science, and the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Chandrasekhar also won the Nobel Prize for Physics after his theories were met with skepticism throughout the 1930s.

"Today we honor the original starman whose universal theories propel current space research and modern astronomy on their ambitious missions," Google said.

Chandrasekhar died in 1995, four years before NASA launched a space telescope bearing his name that observed X-ray emissions from hot parts of the Universe.