Related papers: Collaborating with "professional" amateurs: low-ma…
As our successful Mons campaign to observe WR140 has shown, there is a strong interest among both amateur and professional astronomers to collaborate on specific scientific questions. I highlight here some recent examples of successful…
Amateur contributions to professional publications have increased exponentially over the last decades in the field of Planetary Astronomy. Here we review the different domains of the field in which collaborations between professional and…
Professionals need to be aware that there is a valuable resource available and waiting to be used - the amateur astronomy community. We give some examples of how pro-am collaborations have worked in the past, indicate the advantages and…
Since the CCD technique became financially reachable for amateur astronomers, they can cover topics of professional science. Mainly in the time-domain astronomy, such as variable star research, their help is invaluable. We focus on…
The observation of gaseous giant planets is of high scientific interest. Although they have been the targets of several spacecraft missions, there still remains a need for continuous ground-based observations. As their atmospheres present…
This paper reviews methods which can be used to detect binaries involving low- and intermediate-mass stars, with special emphasis on evolved systems. Besides the traditional methods involving radial-velocity or photometric monitoring, the…
The study of cataclysmic variable stars has long been a fruitful area of co-operation between amateur and professional astronomers. In this Presidential Address, I shall take stock of our current understanding of these fascinating binary…
The ProAm effort in modern astronomy and astrophysics is now a reality. The achievements of amateur astronomers throughout the early history of astronomy are well known. However, during the 20th century, the high specialisation and the…
Close, compact, hierarchical, multiple stellar systems, i.e., multiples having an outer orbital period from months to a few years, comprise a small, but continuously growing group of the triple and multiple star zoo. Many of them consist of…
Stellar models of massive single stars are still plagued by major uncertainties. Testing and calibrating against observations is essential for their reliability. For this purpose one preferably uses observed stars that have never…
Massive early-type stars vary; low-mass late-type brown dwarfs vary, too. I will make a short, but illustrative, summary of my previous studies on stellar and sub-stellar photometric variability (including the discovery of the most variable…
The Aladin sky atlas of the Virtual Observatory has shown to be a powerful and easy-handling tool for the discovery, confirmation, and characterisation of high proper-motion, multiple stellar systems of large separation in the solar…
We discuss a possible method for detection of dark companions of galactic objects of stellar mass. Such binary systems are likely to occur in the galactic disk and possibly also in the halo. The high incidence of binary and…
We have attempted to establish an observational evidence for presence of distant companions which may have acquired and/or absorbed the angular momentum during evolution of multiple systems thus facilitating or enabling formation of contact…
In this review paper, we summarise the goals of asteroseismic studies of close binary stars. We first briefly recall the basic principles of asteroseismology, and highlight how the binarity of a star can be an asset, but also a…
With the advent of large-collecting-area instruments, the number of objects that can be reached by optical long-baseline interferometry is steadily increasing. We present here a few results on massive binary stars, showing the interest of…
Today, professional instrumentation is dominated by heavily oversubscribed telescopes which focus mainly on a limited number of "fashionable" research topics. As a result, time acquisition for massive star research, including extended…
Moderately close binaries are a special class of targets for planet searches. From a theoretical standpoint, their hospitality to giant planets is uncertain and debated. From an observational standpoint, many of these systems present…
Binary systems have long been recognized as the source of powerful astrophysical diagnostics. Among the many applications of binary stars, they have been used as probes of stellar structure and evolution (both of single and binary stars) in…
Many problems in contemporary astrophysics---from understanding the formation of black holes to untangling the chemical evolution of galaxies---rely on knowledge about binary stars. This, in turn, depends on discovery and characterization…