Related papers: Binary stars as the key to understanding planetary…
The total number of true, likely and possible planetary nebulae (PN) now known in the Milky Way is nearly 3000, double the number known a decade ago. The new discoveries are a legacy of the recent availability of wide field, narrowband…
Over forty years of research suggests that the common envelope phase, in which an evolved star engulfs its companion upon expansion, is the critical evolutionary stage forming short-period, compact-object binary systems, such as coalescing…
The majority of Proto-planetary nebulae (PPN) are observed to have bipolar morphologies. The majority of mature PN are observed to have elliptical shapes. In this paper we address the evolution of PPN/PN morphologies attempting to…
We present a catalogue containing 839 candidate post common envelope systems. Common envelope evolution is very important in stellar astrophysics, particularly in the context of very compact and short-period binaries, including cataclysmic…
The discrepancy between abundances computed using optical recombination lines (ORLs) and collisionally excited lines (CELs) is a major unresolved problem in nebular astrophysics. We show here that the largest abundance discrepancies are…
The Planetary Nebulae (PNe) return nuclear processed stellar material back to the interstellar medium (ISM) and thus have an important influence on the chemical evolution of our Galaxy. We present results of a survey of PNe in decay which…
Planetary nebulae have been used as tracers of light and kinematics for the stellar populations in early-type galaxies since more than twenty years. Several empirical properties have surfaced: for example the invariant bright cut-off of the…
Planetary nebulae (PNe) exist in a range of different morphologies, from very simple and symmetric round shells, to elliptical, bipolar, and even quadrupolar shapes. They present extremely complex ensembles of filaments, knots, ansae, and…
A project which aims to understand the abundance patterns of He, C, N, O, Ne, S, and Ar for a small sample of planetary nebulae is described. Abundance ratios of O/H, C/O, and N/O especially show a broad range relative to their solar…
Fragmentation and fission of giant molecular clouds occasionally results in a pair of gravitationally bound star clusters that orbit their mutual centre of mass for some time, under the influence of internal and external perturbations. We…
Galaxies represent the visible fabric of the Universe and there has been considerable progress recently in both observational and theoretical studies. The underlying goal is to understand the present-day diversity of galaxy forms, masses…
Stellar multiplicity is among the oldest and richest problems in astrophysics. Binary stars are a cornerstone of stellar mass and radius measurements that underpin modern stellar evolutionary models. Binaries are the progenitors of many of…
One of the main evolutionary stages of planet formation is the dynamical evolution of planetesimal disks. These disks are thought to evolve through gravitational encounters and physical collisions between single planetesimals. In recent…
Globular clusters contain many stars with surface abundance patterns indicating contributions from hydrogen burning products, as seen in the anti-correlated elemental abundances of e.g. sodium and oxygen, and magnesium and aluminium.…
Nearby companions alter the evolution of massive stars in binary systems. Using a sample of Galactic massive stars in nearby young clusters, we simultaneously measure all intrinsic binary characteristics relevant to quantify the frequency…
This review concentrates almost entirely on globular star clusters. It emphasises the increasing realisation that few of the traditional problems of star cluster astronomy can be studied in isolation: the influence of the Galaxy affects…
Planetary nebulae (PNe), the ejected envelopes of red giant stars, provide us with a history of the last, mass-losing phases of 90 percent of stars initially more massive than the Sun. Here, we analyse James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)…
Planetary nebulae are ionized clouds of gas formed by the hydrogen-rich envelopes of low- and intermediate-mass stars ejected at late evolutionary stages. The strong UV flux from their central stars causes a highly stratified ionization…
I review some aspects related to the influence of planets on the evolution of stars before and beyond the main sequence. Some processes include the tidal destruction of a planet on to a very young main sequence star, on to a low mass main…
I study some aspects of common envelope evolution, where a compact star enters the envelope of a giant star. I show that in some binary systems under a narrow range of parameters, a substantial fraction of the giant stellar envelope is lost…