Related papers: Binary stars as the key to understanding planetary…
The measurement of chemical abundances in planetary nebulae in nearby galaxies is now relatively straightforward. The challenge is to use these chemical abundances to infer the chemical evolution of their host galaxies. At this point, our…
Binary stars evolve differently from single stars, thus binary evolution is very useful for astrophysical studies. This paper discusses the application of binary evolution in the studies of stars, star clusters, galaxies, and cosmology. In…
Stellar mergers and common-envelope evolution are fast (dynamical-timescale) interactions in binary stars that drastically alter their evolution. They are key to understanding a plethora of astrophysical phenomena. Stellar mergers are…
In contrast to the field, the binaries in dense stellar systems are frequently not primordial, and could be either dynamically formed or significantly altered from their primordial states. Destruction and formation of binaries occur in…
Our uncertainties about binary star systems (and triples and so on) limit our capabilities in literally every single one of the Thematic Areas identified for Astro2020. We need to understand the population statistics of stellar multiplicity…
Stellar fundamental properties (masses, radii, effective temperatures) can be extracted from observations of eclipsing binary systems with remarkable precision, often better than 2%. Such precise measurements afford us the opportunity to…
A revival over the past two decades in planetary nebula (PN) morphological studies springs from a combination of factors, including the advent of wide-area, high dynamic range detectors; the growing archives of high resolution images from…
Evolved stars dominate galactic spectra, enrich the galactic medium, expand to change their planetary systems, eject winds of a complex nature, produce spectacular nebulae and illuminate them, and transfer material between binary…
The recent HST optical images, and the optical and ultraviolet spectra, of Magellanic planetary nebulae (PNe), together with the large data-base that has been collected in the past decade, allows unprecedented insight in the evolution of…
Some binary stars experience common envelope evolution, which is accompanied by drastic loss of angular momentum, mass, and orbital energy and which leaves behind close binaries often involving at least one white dwarf, neutron star, or…
We study the bending of jets in binary stellar systems. A compact companion accretes mass from the slow wind of the mass-losing primary star, forms an accretion disk, and blows two opposite jets. These fast jets are bent by the slow wind.…
Planetary nebulae (PNe) are essential tracers of the kinematics of the diffuse halo and intracluster light where stellar spectroscopy is unfeasible, due to their strong emission lines. However, that is not all they can reveal about the…
We have calculated evolution of neutron star binaries towards the coalescence driven by gravitational radiation. The hydrodynamical effects as well as the general relativistic effects are important in the final phase. All corrections up to…
We highlight the importance of eclipsing double-line binaries in our understanding on star formation and evolution. We review the recent discoveries of low-mass and sub-stellar eclipsing binaries belonging to star-forming regions, open…
We investigate the possible progenitors of the planetary nebulae (PNs) which populate the top 0.5 mag of the [O III] 5007 planetary nebula luminosity function (PNLF). We show that the absolute luminosity of the PNLF cutoff demands that the…
Electron temperatures, densities, ionic and elemental abundances of helium, nitrogen, oxygen, argon, sulfur and neon were derived for a sample of bulge planetary nebulae, representative of its intermediate mass population. Using these…
The present dynamical configuration of planets in binary star systems may not reflect their formation process since the binary orbit may have changed in the past after the planet formation process was completed. An observed binary system…
In this PhD Thesis we study the occurrence of powerful stellar outbursts in the late phases of evolution of stars like the Sun. This is one of the most controversial topics in the field, as the extraordinary variety of shapes revealed by…
It is likely that at least some planetary nebulae are composed of matter which was ejected from a binary star system during common-envelope (CE) evolution. For these planetary nebulae the ionizing component is the hot and luminous remnant…
Most main sequence stars, unlike our Sun, belong to multiple systems with two or more stars. How and when these multiples come together and become bound is uncertain, since the earliest stages of star formation are difficult to resolve. We…