Related papers: Stars at High Spatial Resolution
Galactic interstellar dust has a profound impact not only on our observations of objects throughout the Universe, but also on the morphology, star formation, and chemical evolution of the Galaxy. The advent of massive imaging and…
We outline the impact of a small two-band UV-photometry satellite mission on the field of stellar physics, magnetospheres of stars, binaries, stellar clusters, interstellar matter, and exoplanets. On specific examples of different types of…
The growth of luminous structures and the building blocks of life in the Universe began as primordial gas was processed in stars and mixed at galactic scales. The mechanisms responsible for this development are not well understood and have…
Astronomers usually need the highest angular resolution possible, but the blurring effect of diffraction imposes a fundamental limit on the image quality from any single telescope. Interferometry allows light collected at widely-separated…
Each galaxy is observed only once along its life, making galaxy evolution fundamentally an inverse statistical problem: time-dependent physics must be inferred from ensembles of single-epoch snapshots. To move beyond descriptive scaling…
Motivated by the possible existence of other universes, with possible variations in the laws of physics, this paper explores the parameter space of fundamental constants that allows for the existence of stars. To make this problem…
Determining how galaxies accumulate stellar mass is paramount to understanding the Universe. Two primary mechanisms drive this process: star-formation (SF) & mergers. Our understanding of star formation, and to some degree the processes…
Scientific research is a continuous process, and the speed of future progress can be estimated by the pace of finding explanations for previous research questions. In this observers based view of stellar pulsation and asteroseismology, we…
Neutron stars are the densest, directly observable stellar objects in the universe and serve as unique astrophysical laboratories to study the behavior of matter under extreme physical conditions. This book chapter is devoted to describing…
Magnetic activity is a ubiquitous feature of stars with convective outer layers, with implications from stellar evolution to planetary atmospheres. Investigating the mechanisms responsible for the observed stellar activity signals from days…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
The rest-frame UV emission from massive stars contains a wealth of information about the physical nature and conditions of star formation in galaxies. Using studies of the rest-frame UV, the past decade has witnessed the beginning of…
Stellar feedback -- stars regulating further star formation through the injection of energy and momentum into the interstellar medium -- operates through a complex set of processes that originate in star clusters but shape entire galaxies.…
We present the results of a study aimed at assessing whether low and high mass stars form similarly. Our approach is (1) to examine the observed projected rotational velocities among a large sample of newly-formed stars spanning a range in…
Microlensing is a powerful tool for studying stellar atmospheres because as the source crosses regions of formally infinite magnification (caustics) the surfaceof the star is resolved, thereby allowing one to measure the radial intensity…
Massive stars condition the evolution of the interstellar medium by the amount of energy released during their lives and especially by their deaths as supernova explosions. The vast amounts of spectroscopic data for massive stars provided…
Determining the physical properties of microlensing events depends on having accurate angular sizes of the source star. Using long-baseline optical interferometry we are able to measure the angular sizes of nearby stars with uncertainties…
High-contrast observations in optical and infrared astronomy are defined as any observation requiring a technique to reveal a celestial object of interest that is in such close angular proximity to another source brighter by a factor of at…
Massive stars are the drivers of star formation and galactic dynamics due to their relatively short lives and explosive demises, thus impacting all of astrophysics. Since they are so impactful on their environments, through their winds on…
Significant advances in the discovery and characterization of the planetary systems of nearby stars can be accomplished with a moderate aperture high performance coronagraphic space mission that could be started in the next decade. Its…