Related papers: A New Method of Determining the Characteristics of…
We report the results of an exploratory program to image the extended circumstellar envelopes of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars in dust-scattered galactic light. The goal is to characterize the morphology of the envelopes as a probe of…
Observations of increasingly higher spatial resolution reveal the existence of asymmetries in the circumstellar envelopes of a small fraction of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars. Although there is no general consensus for their origin, a…
We describe how the large scale geometry of the circumstellar envelopes of asymptotic giant branch stars can be used to probe the presence of unseen stellar companions. A nearby companion modifies the mass loss by gravitationally focusing…
We report results of a program to image the extended circumstellar envelopes of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars in dust-scattered Galactic light. The goal is to characterize the shapes of the envelopes to probe the mass-loss geometry…
Binary post-asymptotic giant branch (post-AGB) stars are thought to be the products of a strong but poorly-understood interaction during the AGB phase. The aim of this contribution is to update the orbital elements of a sample of galactic…
Preplanetary nebulae and planetary nebulae are evolved, mass-losing stellar objects that show a wide variety of morphologies. Many of these nebulae consist of outer structures that are nearly spherical (spiral/shell/arc/halo) and inner…
Binary systems in the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) phase are widely recognized as a leading theoretical framework underpinning the observed asymmetric morphologies of planetary nebulae. However, the detection of binary companions in AGB…
Context. The transition from the spherically symmetric envelopes around asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars to the asymmetric morphologies observed in planetary nebulae is still not well understood, and the shaping mechanisms are a subject…
The goal is to build up a simple dynamical model for the out-flowing circumstellar envelope around AGB stars in a wide binary system to explore the parameter dependence of the geometrical characteristics of column density patterns. An AGB…
Context. The Mass loss of Evolved StarS (MESS) sample observed with PACS on board the Herschel Space Observatory revealed that several asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars are surrounded by an asymmetric circumstellar envelope (CSE) whose…
Aims. In a first study, we characterised the properties of the gas component in the circumstellar envelopes surrounding a sample of 29 AGB stars with UV excesses. Now we intend to complement this information with an analysis of the dust…
Recent observations of strikingly well-defined spirals in the circumstellar envelopes of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars point to the existence of binary companions in these objects. In the case of planet or brown dwarf mass companions,…
In this chapter the focus is on the properties of post-Asymptotic Giant Branch (post-AGB) stars in binary systems. Their Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) are very characteristic: they show a near-infrared excess, indicative of the…
Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars generally have spherically symmetric envelopes, whereas most post-AGB stars and Planetary Nebulae (PNe) show axisymmetric circumstellar envelopes. While various mechanisms for axisymmetric circumstellar…
Although the majority of known binary Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars are symbiotic systems (i.e. with a WD as a secondary star), main-sequence companions of AGB stars can be more numerous, even though they are more difficult to find…
Asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars are known to lose a significant amount of mass by a stellar wind, which controls the remainder of their stellar lifetime. High angular-resolution observations show that the winds of these cool stars…
A rich zoo of peculiar objects forms when Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars, undergo interactions in a binary system. For example, Barium (Ba) stars are main-sequence and red-giant stars that accreted mass from the outflows of a former…
Binary interactions have been proposed to explain a variety of circumstellar structures seen around evolved stars, including asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and planetary nebulae. Studies resolving the circumstellar envelopes of AGB…
Post-asymptotic giant branch (post-AGB) stars with discs are all binaries. Many of these binaries have orbital periods between 100 and 1000 days so cannot have avoided mass transfer between the AGB star and its companion, likely through a…
Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars are good tracers of the Galactic structure. They are bright in the infrared and can therefore be detected even in the most obscured regions of the Galaxy. Maser emission from their circumstellar envelopes…