Related papers: Planetary nebulae : getting closer to an unbiased …
There is no quantitative theory to explain why a high 80% of all planetary nebulae are non-spherical. The Binary Hypothesis states that a companion to the progenitor of a central star of planetary nebula is required to shape the nebula and…
During the past 20 years, the idea that non-spherical planetary nebulae (PN) may need a binary or planetary interaction to be shaped was discussed by various authors. It is now generally agreed that the varied morphologies of PN cannot be…
Binarity has been hypothesised to play an important, if not ubiquitous, role in the formation of planetary nebulae (PNe). Yet there remains a severe paucity of known binary central stars required to test the binary hypothesis and to place…
In this review I present the binary model for the shaping of planetary nebulae (PNe) as I view it, in the context of historical evolution of other models for the shaping of PNe over more than 30 years. In describing the binary model, I…
It is now clear that a binary formation pathway is responsible for a significant fraction of planetary nebulae, and this increased sample of known binaries means that we are now in a position to begin to constrain their influence on the…
We examine recent studies on the formation rate of planetary nebulae and find this rate to be about one-third of the formation rate of white dwarfs. This implies than only about one-third of all planetary nebulae that evolve to form white…
It is now clear that a binary evolutionary pathway is responsible for a significant fraction of all planetary nebulae, with some authors even going so far as to claim that binarity may be a near requirement for the formation of an…
The increase in discovered close binary central stars of planetary nebulae is leading to a sufficiently large sample to begin to make broader conclusions about the effect of close binary stars on common envelope evolution and planetary…
Only a handful of binary central stars of planetary nebulae (PNe) are known today, due to the difficulty of detecting their companions. Preliminary results from radial velocity surveys, however, seem to indicate that binarity plays a…
It is already known that about 10% of central stars of PNe are very short-period binaries (hours to days), which are detected through photometric variations. These must have been formed through common-envelope interactions in initially wide…
Planetary nebulae (PNe) are circumstellar gas ejected during an intense mass-losing phase in the the lives of asymptotic giant branch stars. PNe have a stunning variety of shapes, most of which are not spherically symmetric. The debate over…
It is widely believed that central star binarity plays an important role in the formation and evolution of aspherical planetary nebulae, however observational support for this hypothesis is lacking. Here, we present the most recent results…
We examine the images of hundreds of planetary nebulae (PNe) and find that for about one in six PNe the morphology is too `messy' to be accounted for by models of stellar binary interaction. We speculate that interacting triple stellar…
In an attempt to determine how many planetary nebulae derive from binary interactions, we have started a project to measure their unbiased binary fraction. This number, when compared to the binary fraction of the presumed parent population…
The majority of planetary nebulae (PNe) are not spherical, and current single-star models cannot adequately explain all the morphologies we observe. This has led to the Binary Hypothesis, which states that PNe are preferentially formed by…
A number of efforts are underway to detect close binary stars in planetary nebulae. The primary goal of these studies is to determine the binary fraction of central stars. The next stage is a detailed analysis of the binaries to determine…
The shaping of the nebula is currently one of the outstanding unsolved problems in planetary nebula (PN) research. Several mechanisms have been proposed, most of which require a binary companion. However, direct evidence for a binary…
It is now clear that central star binarity plays a key role in the formation and evolution of planetary nebulae, with a significant fraction playing host to close-binary central stars which have survived one or more common envelope…
Planetary nebulae are traditionally considered to represent the final evolutionary stage of all intermediate-mass stars ($\sim$0.7-8Msol). Recent evidence seems to contradict this picture. In particular, since the launch of the Hubble Space…
We show that there are strong links between certain types of asymmetrical Planetary Nebulae (PNe) and symbiotic stars. Symbiotics are binaries and several have extended optical nebulae all of which are asymmetrical and ~-40% are bipolar.…