Related papers: Giant branch planetary systems: Dynamical and radi…
The study of stellar structure and evolution is one of the main building blocks of astrophysics, and the Sun has an importance both as the star that is most amenable to detailed study and as the star that has by far the biggest impact on…
Giant eruptions (GE) in Luminous blue variables (LBVs) are years to decades-long episodes of enhanced mass loss from the outer layers of the star during which the star undergoes major changes in its physical and observed properties. We use…
Massive stars are "cosmic engines" (cf the title of the IAU Symposium 250). They drive the photometric and chemical evolution of galaxies, inject energy and momentum through stellar winds and supernova explosions, they modify in this way…
Once understood as the paradigm of passively evolving objects, the discovery that massive galaxies experienced an enormous structural evolution in the last ten billion years has opened an active line of research. The most significant…
We review the current basic picture of the evolution of massive stars and how their evolution and structure changes as a function of initial mass. We give an overview of the fate of modern (Pop I) and primordial (Pop III) stars with…
A quarter of DA white dwarfs are metal polluted, yet elements heavier than helium sink down through the stellar atmosphere on timescales of days. Hence, these white dwarfs must be currently accreting material containing heavy elements.…
Practically all known planet hosts will evolve into white dwarfs, and large parts of their planetary systems will survive this transition - the same is true for the solar system beyond the orbit of Mars. Spectroscopy of white dwarfs…
We examine the envelope properties of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars as they evolve on the upper AGB and during the early post-AGB phase. Due to the high mass loss rate, the envelope mass decreases by more than an order of magnitude.…
The gravitational action of the smooth energy-matter components filling in the universe can affect the orbit of a planetary system. Changes are related to the acceleration of the cosmological scale size R. In a universe with significant…
We study the survival of gas planets around stars with masses in the range 1-5 Msun, as these stars evolve off the Main Sequence. We show that planets with masses smaller than one Jupiter mass do not survive the Planetary Nebula phase if…
Exoplanets have been observed around stars at all stages of stellar evolution, in many cases orbiting in configurations that will eventually lead to the planets being engulfed or consumed by their host stars, such as Hot Jupiters or…
The transition from Asymptotic Giant Branch star to Planetary Nebula is short-lived and mysterious. Though it lasts only a few thousand years, it is thought to be the time when the asymmetries observed in subsequent phases arise. During…
Massive stars lose a large fraction of their mass to radiation-driven winds throughout their entire life. These outflows impact both the life and death of these stars and their surroundings. Theoretical mass-loss rates of hot, massive stars…
Observations of star-forming galaxies in the distant Universe (z > 2) are starting to confirm the importance of massive stars in shaping galaxy emission and evolution. Inevitably, these distant stellar populations are unresolved, and the…
A planetary system may undergo significant radial rearrangement during the early part of its lifetime. Planet migration can come about through interaction with the surrounding planetesimal disk and the gas disk--while the latter is still…
We analyse the potential migration of massive planets forming far away from an inner planetary system. For this, we follow the dynamical evolution of the orbital elements of a massive planet undergoing a dissipative process with a gas disc…
We investigate the effects of radiation pressure from stars on the survival of the star-forming giant clumps in high-redshift massive disc galaxies, during the most active phase of galaxy formation. The clumps, typically of mass ~10^8-10^9…
The modelling of massive star evolution is a complex task, and is very sensitive to the way physical processes (such as convection, rotation, mass loss, etc.) are included in stellar evolution code. Moreover, the very high observed fraction…
Those massive stars that, during their deaths, give rise to gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) must be endowed with an unusually large amount of angular momentum in their inner regions, one to two orders of magnitude greater than the ones that make…
Giant planets acquire gas, ices and rocks during the early formation stages of planetary systems and thus inform us on the formation process itself. Proceeding from inside out, examining the connections between the deep interiors and the…