Related papers: Explaining the Praesepe blue straggler HD 73666
Context. Blue Stragglers Stars (BSSs) are thought to form in globular clusters by two main formation channels: i) mergers induced by stellar collisions and ii) coalescence or mass-transfer between companions in binary systems. The detailed…
Recent surveys of the blue straggler (BS) population in the galactic globular cluster M3 (NGC 5272) give the first complete characterization of the number density of BSs as a function of radius over an entire globular cluster. The BSs in M3…
Blue Stragglers are stars located in an unexpected region of the color-magnitude diagram of a stellar population, as they appear bluer and more luminous than the stars in the turnoff region. They are ubiquitous, since they have been found…
The old (7 Gyr) open cluster NGC 188 has yielded a wealth of astrophysical insight into its rich blue straggler population. Specifically, the NGC 188 blue stragglers are characterized by: A binary frequency of 80% for orbital periods less…
We examine the blue straggler populations of 13 low-luminosity (M_V_t >~ -6) globular clusters and 2 old open clusters. These clusters test blue straggler formation in environments intermediate between higher luminosity (and usually higher…
Although the formation of blue straggler stars (BSSs) is routinely attributed to stellar interactions in binary systems, the relative importance of the direct collision and slow(er) stellar coalescence formation channels is still poorly…
We present a technique to identify the most probable dynamical formation scenario for an observed binary or triple system containing one or more merger products or, alternatively, to rule out the possibility of a dynamical origin. Our…
In open star clusters, where all members formed at about the same time, blue straggler stars are typically observed to be brighter and bluer than hydrogen-burning main-sequence stars, and therefore should already have evolved into giant…
The origin of blue straggler stars (BSS) in globular clusters (GCs) is still not fully understood: they can form from stellar collisions, or through mass transfer in isolated, primordial binaries (PBs). In this paper we use the radial…
We analyze the position of the two populations of blue stragglers in the globular cluster M30 in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. Both populations of blue stragglers are brighter than the cluster's turn-off, but one population (the blue…
Blue straggler stars (BSSs) are brighter and bluer than the main-sequence (MS) turnoff and more massive than MS stars.Two scenarios for their formation have been proposed: collision-induced stellar mergers (COL-BSSs),or mass-transfer in…
Blue straggler stars (BSS) are abundantly observed in all Galactic globular clusters (GGC) where data exist. However, observations alone cannot reveal the relative importance of various formation channels or the typical formation times for…
Bifurcated patterns of blue straggler stars in their color--magnitude diagrams have atracted significant attention. This type of special (but rare) pattern of two distinct blue straggler sequences is commonly interpreted as evidence of…
Among the most striking feature of blue straggler stars (BSS) is the presence of multiple sequences of BSSs in the colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of several globular clusters. It is often envisaged that such a multiple BSS sequence would…
HD 133880 is a rapidly rotating Bp star and host to one of the strongest magnetic fields of any Bp star. A member of the Upper Centaurus Lupus association, it is a star with a well-determined age of 16 Myr. Twelve new spectra obtained from…
The recent observation (Ferraro et al. 2003b) of the blue straggler population in 47 Tucanae gives the first detailed characterization of their spatial distribution in the cluster over its entire volume. Relative to the light distribution,…
We present a picture of the very unusual blue straggler S1082 in the old open cluster M67 whose light is the sum of a close binary (P = 1.0677978 d) and another cluster member. We provide a complete V-band light curve for the system, and…
We present an analysis of optical HST/STIS and HST/FOS spectroscopy of 6 blue stragglers found in the globular clusters M3, NGC6752 and NGC6397. These stars are a subsample of a set of ~50 blue stragglers and stars above the main sequence…
In this chapter we consider two formation channels for blue straggler stars: 1) the merger of two single stars via a collision, and 2) those produced via mass transfer within a binary. We review how computer simulations show that stellar…
This chapter describes the current state of models of individual blue stragglers. Stellar collisions, binary mergers (or coalescence), and partial or ongoing mass transfer have all been studied in some detail. The products of stellar…