Related papers: Giant branch systems: surveys and populations
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…
This chapter provides an in-depth overview of white dwarfs, the evolutionary terminus of the vast majority of stars. It discusses their discovery, their nature as degenerate objects, their connections to earlier phases of stellar evolution,…
White dwarf stars constitute the final evolutionary stage for more than 95 per cent of all stars. The Galactic population of white dwarfs conveys a wealth of information about several fundamental issues and are of vital importance to study…
The occurrence of planets in binary star systems has been investigated via a variety of techniques that sample a wide range of semi-major axes, but with a preponderance of such results applicable to planets with semi-major axes less than a…
The last several years have brought about a dynamic shift in the view of exoplanetary systems in the post-main sequence, perhaps epitomized by the evidence for surviving rocky planetary bodies at white dwarfs. Coinciding with the launch of…
Planetary materials orbiting white dwarf stars reveal the ultimate fate of the planets of the Solar System and all known transiting exoplanets. Observed metal pollution and infrared excesses from debris disks support that planetary systems…
The internal properties of stars in the red-giant phase undergo significant changes on relatively short timescales. Long near-uninterrupted high-precision photometric timeseries observations from dedicated space missions such as CoRoT and…
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…
The majority of stars more massive than the Sun is found in binary or multiple star systems and many of them will interact during their evolution. Specific interactions, where progenitors and post-mass transfer (MT) systems are clearly…
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…
The stellar populations of galaxies contain a wealth of detailed information. From the youngest, most massive stars, to almost invisible remnants, the history of star formation is encoded in the stars that make up a galaxy. Extracting some,…
In this paper, the evolution of exoplanet orbits at the late stages of stellar evolution is studied by the method of population synthesis. The evolution of stars is traced from the Main Sequence stage to the white dwarf stage. The MESA…
Open and globular star clusters have served as benchmarks for the study of stellar evolution due to their supposed nature as simple stellar populations of the same age and metallicity. After a brief review of some of the pioneering work…
Several groups have recently suggested that small planets orbiting very closely around white dwarf stars could be promising locations for life to arise, even after stellar death. There are still many uncertainties, however, regarding the…
Observations of star-forming galaxies in the distant Universe have confirmed the importance of massive stars in shaping galaxy emission and evolution. Distant stellar populations are unresolved, and the limited data available must be…
The timing method, using either stellar pulsations or eclipse timing of close binaries as a clock, is proving to be an efficient way to detect planets around stars that have evolved beyond the red giant branch. In this article we present a…
Aims. The aim of this work is to study the dynamical effects of the Galaxy on binary star systems with physical and orbital charac- teristics similar to those of the population of known wide binary stars with exoplanets. As secondary goal…
Their ubiquity and extreme densities make star clusters probes of prime importance of galaxy evolution. Old globular clusters keep imprints of the physical conditions of their assembly in the early Universe, and younger stellar objects,…
Our improving understanding of the life cycle of planetary systems prompts investigations of the role of the Galactic environment before, during and after Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stellar evolution. Here, we investigate the interplay…
Properties of nearby dwarf galaxies are briefly discussed. Dwarf galaxies vary widely in their star formation histories, the ages of their subpopulations, and in their enrichment history. Furthermore, many dwarf galaxies show evidence for…