How can a star of as much as 8 solar masses form a white dwarf when it dies?

Question

How can a star of as much as 8 solar masses form a white dwarf when it dies?

Answer 1

When an 8 solar mass star attains a diameter of about 100 km  it becomes a stable white dwarf.

Answer 2

Simply put, gravitational collapse. All of the stars energies basically collapse inward and become highly condensed.

Answer 3

I don't think it can.  Something that large is far more likely to produce a neutron star.  However I am woefully out of date in astronomy and hopefully Angela S or another astronomer can answer this more definitively.

Answer 4

well, it is possible in a way that most of the mass would be concentrated in its outer layers and the resulting core would have mass of less than 1.4Mof sun. So when they explode much of the mass is ejected out and what left in core is less than the Chandrashekhar limit.

well i got this from one of the website:

"One point to remember about this Chandrasekhar limit is that it refers to the mass of the material in the remnant core after all other mass loss. Stars loose a lot of their mass as they evolve off the main sequence and become an AGB. The upper mass-limit for a main sequence star that will go on to form a white dwarf rather than a neutron star is not precisely known but is thought to be about 8 solar masses"