Related papers: The first heavy-metal hot subdwarf composite binar…

The project Massive Unseen Companions to Hot Faint Underluminous Stars from SDSS (MUCHFUSS) aims at finding hot subdwarf stars with massive compact companions like massive white dwarfs (M > 1.0 Msun), neutron stars or stellar mass black…

Utilizing the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) Second Incremental Data Release Catalog, we have retrieved near-IR magnitudes for several hundred hot subdwarfs (sdO and sdB stars) drawn from the "Catalogue of Spectroscopically Identified…

Hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) are evolved, core helium-burning objects located on the extreme horizontal branch. Their formation history is still puzzling as the sdB progenitors must lose nearly all of their hydrogen envelope during the…

We report the discovery of the first short period binary in which a hot subdwarf star (sdOB) fills its Roche lobe and started mass transfer to its companion. The object was discovered as part of a dedicated high-cadence survey of the…

Hot subdwarfs in close binaries with either M dwarf, brown dwarf or white dwarf companions show unique light variations. In hot subdwarf binaries with M dwarf or brown dwarf companions we can observe the so-called reflection effect and in…

Hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) are core helium-burning stars located on the extreme horizontal branch. About half of the known sdB stars are found in close binaries. Their short orbital periods of 1.2 h to a few days suggest that they are post…

Upsilon Sagittarii is a hydrogen-deficient binary that has been suggested to be in its second stage of mass transfer, after the primary has expanded to become a helium supergiant following core helium exhaustion. A tentative identification…

Neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes are the remnants of massive stars, which ended their lives in supernova explosions. These exotic objects can only be studied in relatively rare cases. If they are interacting with close companions…

We have completed a survey of twenty-two ultraviolet-selected hot subdwarfs using the Fiber-fed Extended Range Optical Spectrograph (FEROS) and the 2.2-m telescope at La Silla. The sample includes apparently single objects as well as hot…

Hot subdwarf binaries with white dwarf companions with orbital periods of less than two hours are progenitor candidates for massive single white dwarfs as well as a variety of thermonuclear explosions. Our aim is to determine the binary…

The rapid rotation of Be stars may be caused in some cases by past mass and angular momentum accretion in an interacting binary in which the mass donor is currently viewed as a small, hot subdwarf stripped of its outer envelope. Here we…

Many hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) are in close binaries, and the favored formation channels for subdwarfs rely on mass transfer in a binary system to strip a core He burning star of its envelope. However, these channels cannot account for…

We report the discovery of a very cool d/sdL7+T7.5p common proper motion binary system, SDSS J1416+13AB, found by cross-matching the UKIDSS Large Area Survey Data Release 5 against the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7. The d/sdL7 is…

The estimation of the binary fraction of hot subdwarfs is key to shed light on the different evolution scenarios proposed to explain the loss of the hydrogen envelope during the red giant branch phase. In this paper we analyse the spectral…

The predicted orbital period histogram of an sdB population is bimodal with a peak at short (< 10 days) and long (> 250 days) periods. Observationally, there are many short-period sdB systems known, but only very few long-period sdB…

Many hot subdwarf stars show composite spectral energy distributions indicative of cool main sequence companions. Binary population synthesis (BPS) models demonstrate such systems can be formed via Roche lobe overflow or common envelope…

We present the second part of our detailed analysis of the hot sdO and spectroscopic standard star BD+28 4211, in which we focus on the optical spectrum. In the first part of our study, we determined the abundances of some 11 metals…

Most hot subdwarfs (sdO/B) are low-mass core-helium-burning stars formed through binary interaction. A subgroup of intermediate He-rich sdOBs shows extreme heavy-metal (Z>30) enrichments exceeding $10^4$ times solar, especially in Zr or Pb.…

Subdwarf B (sdB) stars are thought to be core helium burning stars with low mass hydrogen envelopes. In recent years it has become clear that many sdB stars lose their hydrogen through interaction with a binary companion and continue to…

The masses of compact objects like white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes are fundamental to astrophysics, but very difficult to measure. We present the results of an analysis of subluminous B (sdB) stars in close binary systems with…