Related papers: Extragalaxtic Stellar Astronomy
Quantitative spectroscopy of O-type stars in galaxies beyond 1 Mpc requires the unprecedented sensitivity of the so-called Extremely Large Telescopes. Visible spectroscopy with these exciting new facilities will give us the first chance to…
Observations of the Galactic ISM have had tremendous impact on our understanding of the physics of galactic gas and the processes of galaxy formation. Similar observations at z>2 reveal the neutral baryonic content of the universe, trace…
Core helium burning primary red clump (RC) stars are evolved red giant stars which are excellent standard candles. As such, these stars are routinely used to map the Milky Way or determine the distance to other galaxies among other things.…
The disciplines of asteroseismology and extrasolar planet science overlap methodically in the branch of high-precision photometric time series observations. Light curves are, amongst others, useful to measure intrinsic stellar variability…
[Abridged] Luminous hot stars dominate the stellar energy input to the interstellar medium throughout cosmological time, they are laboratories to test theories of stellar evolution and multiplicity, and they serve as luminous tracers of…
Massive stars play a major role not only in stellar evolution but also galactic evolution theory. This is because of their dynamical interaction with binary companions, and because their strong winds and explosive deaths as supernovae…
Neutron stars are the densest, directly observable stellar objects in the universe and serve as unique astrophysical laboratories to study the behavior of matter under extreme physical conditions. This book chapter is devoted to describing…
Massive stars play a fundamental role in shaping the evolution of galaxies through feedback, chemical enrichment, and their end products as neutron stars and black holes. Despite major progress in the last decade, key uncertainties remain…
Photospheric radiation momentum is efficiently transferred by absorption through metal lines to the gaseous matter in the atmospheres of massive stars, sustaining strong winds and mass loss rates. Not only is this critical for the evolution…
Over the last years a new generation of model atmosphere codes, which include the effects of metal line-blanketing of millions of spectral lines in NLTE, has been used to re-determine the properties of massive stars through quantitative…
In this lecture, we give a first introduction to neutron stars, based on fundamental physical principles. After outlining their amazing macroscopic properties, as obtained from observations, we infer the extreme conditions of matter in…
The star formation, mass assembly and chemical enrichment histories of galaxies, and their present distributions of dark matter, remain encoded in their stellar populations. Distinguishing the actual distribution functions of stellar age,…
The galaxies of the Local Group that are currently forming stars can serve as our laboratories for understanding star formation and the evolution of massive stars. In this talk I will summarize what I think we've learned about these topics…
The extreme luminosity and their fairly unique temporal behaviour have made supernovae a superb tool to measure distances in the universe. As complex astrophysical events they provide interesting insights into explosion physics, explosive…
Current burning issues in stellar physics, for both hot and cool stars, concern their magnetism. In hot stars, stable magnetic fields of fossil origin impact their stellar structure and circumstellar environment, with a likely major role in…
Massive galaxies, such as nearby ellipticals, have relatively low number densities, yet they host the majority of the stellar mass in the universe. Understanding their origin is a central problem of galaxy formation. Age dating of stellar…
Massive stars are essential to understand a variety of branches of astronomy including galaxy and star cluster evolution, nucleosynthesis and supernovae, pulsars and black holes. It has become evident that massive star evolution is very…
The extragalactic background light (EBL) is of fundamental importance both for understanding the entire process of galaxy evolution and for gamma-ray astronomy. However, the overall spectrum of the EBL between 0.1 and 1000 microns has never…
Cosmological measurements of the radiation density in the early universe can be used as a sensitive probe of physics beyond the standard model. Observations of primordial light element abundances have long been used to place non-trivial…
The non-linear relation between X-ray and UV luminosity in quasars can be used to estimate their distance. Recently, we have shown that despite the large dispersion of the relation, a Hubble Diagram made of large samples of quasars can…