Related papers: Combining observational techniques to constrain co…
S-type stars are late-type giants enhanced with s-process elements originating either from nucleosynthesis during the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) or from a pollution by a binary companion. The former are called intrinsic S stars, and the…
Blue stragglers (BSS) are stars whose position in the Color-Magnitude Diagram (CMD) places them above the main sequence turn-off (TO) point of a star cluster. Using data from the core of 47 Tuc in the ultraviolet (UV), we have identified…
After briefly describing the anelastic approximation and Glatzmaier's code, we present results from our preliminary studies of core convection during the hydrogen burning phase of a 15 solar mass star, as well as our most recent results…
Stellar evolution theory is most uncertain for massive stars. For reliable predictions of the evolution of massive stars and their final fate, solid constraints on the physical parameters, and their changes along the evolution and in…
We study the influence of stratification on stellar turbulent convection near the stellar surface and in depth by carrying out 3D high resolution hydrodynamic simulations with the ASH code. Four simulations with different radial density…
Sub-subgiant stars (SSGs) fall below the subgiant branch and/or red of the giant branch in open and globular clusters, an area of the color-magnitude diagram (CMD) not populated by standard stellar evolution tracks. One hypothesis is that…
Overshooting and semiconvection are among the most uncertainties in the evolution of massive stars. Complete mixing over a certain distance beyond the convective boundary (Stothers \& Chin 1985) and an exponentially decaying diffusion…
The nearby red supergiant (RSG) Betelgeuse has a complex circumstellar medium out to at least 0.5 parsecs from its surface, shaped by its mass-loss history within the past 0.1 Myr, its environment, and its motion through the interstellar…
In this paper we present new models of massive stars based on recent advancements in the theory of diffusive mixing and a new empirical formulation of the mass-loss rates of red supergiant stars. We compute two sets of stellar models of…
The increase in luminosity as a star evolves on the red-giant branch is interrupted briefly when the hydrogen-burning shell reaches the vicinity of the composition discontinuity left behind from the first convective dredge-up. The…
The Humphreys-Davidson (HD) limit empirically defines a region of high luminosities (log L > 5.5) and low effective temperatures (T < 20kK) on the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram in which hardly any supergiant stars are observed. Attempts to…
Our knowledge of stellar evolution is driven by one-dimensional (1D) simulations. 1D models, however, are severely limited by uncertainties on the exact behaviour of many multi-dimensional phenomena occurring inside stars, affecting their…
In the standard view of massive star evolution, luminous blue variables (LBVs) are transitional objects between the most massive O-type stars and Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. With short lifetimes, these stars should all be found near one another.…
We study the convection zones in the outer envelope of hot massive stars which are caused by opacity peaks associated with iron and helium ionization. We determine the occurrence and properties of these convection zones as function of the…
We present stellar evolutionary sequences for asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars in the Magellanic Cloud clusters NGC 1978, NGC 1846 and NGC 419. The new stellar models for the three clusters match the observed effective temperatures on…
During their main sequence evolution, massive stars can develop convective regions very close to their surface. These regions are caused by an opacity peak associated with iron ionization. Cantiello et al. (2009) found a possible connection…
Some physical processes that occur during a star's main-sequence evolution also affect its post main-sequence evolution. It is well known that stars with masses above approximately 1.1 $M_{\odot}$ have well-mixed convective cores on the…
Variable B supergiants (BSGs) constitute a heterogeneous group of stars with complex photometric and spectroscopic behaviours. They exhibit mass-loss variations and experience different types of oscillation modes, and there is growing…
We use Spitzer observations of the rich population of Asymptotic Giant Branch stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) to test models describing the internal structure and nucleosynthesis of the most massive of these stars, i.e. those with…
Convective overshoot mixing is a critical ingredient of stellar structure models, but is treated in most cases by ad hoc extensions of the mixing-length theory for convection. Advanced theories which are both more physical and numerically…