Related papers: Giant branch systems: surveys and populations
The final expulsion of gas by a star as it forms a planetary nebula --- the ionized shell of gas often observed surrounding a young white dwarf --- is one of the most poorly understood stages of stellar evolution. Such nebulae form…
We explore the motivation behind large stellar surveys in Galactic astronomy, in particular, surveys that measure the photometric, phase space and abundance properties of thousands or millions of stars. These observations are essential to…
Every Sun-like star will eventually evolve into a red giant, a transition which can profoundly affect the evolution of a surrounding planetary system. The timescale of dynamical planet evolution and orbital decay has important implications…
Planets are observed to orbit the component star(s) of stellar binary systems on so-called circumprimary or circumsecondary orbits, as well as around the entire binary system on so-called circumbinary orbits. Depending on the orbital…
Star clusters and their stellar populations play a significant role in the context of galaxy evolution, across space (from local to high redshift) and time (from currently forming to fossil remnants). We are now within reach of answering a…
A detailed understanding of the physics of star and planet formation requires study of individual objects as well as statistical assessment of global properties and evolutionary trends. Observational investigations of circumstellar material…
Orbital evolution is a critical process that sculpts planetary systems, particularly during their early stages where planet-disk interactions are expected to lead to the formation of resonant chains. Despite the theoretically expected…
Understanding how giant and terrestrial planets form and evolve, what is their internal structure and that of their atmosphere, represents one of the major challenges of modern astronomy, which is directly connected to the ultimate search…
The ubiquity of planets and diversity of planetary systems reveal planet formation encompass many complex and competing processes. In this series of papers, we develop and upgrade a population synthesis model as a tool to identify the…
We have computed the fate of exoplanet companions around main sequence stars to explore the frequency of planet ingestion by their host stars during the red giant branch evolution. Using published properties of exoplanetary systems combined…
White dwarfs are the dense, burnt-out remnants of the vast majority of stars, condemned to cool over billions of years as they steadily radiate away their residual thermal energy. To first order, their atmosphere is expected to be made…
Galactic history is written in the white dwarf stars. Their surface properties hint at interiors composed of matter under extreme conditions. In the forty years since their discovery, pulsating white dwarf stars have moved from side-show…
Red-giant stars are proving to be an incredible source of information for testing models of stellar evolution, as asteroseismology has opened up a window into their interiors. Such insights are a direct result of the unprecedented data from…
Observations have revealed that most stars are born in clusters. These systems, containing from tens to thousands of stars and typically significant mass in gas in the youngest systems, evolve due to a combination of stellar and star-gas…
Planetary formation might occur at different stages of the stellar evolution of compact binaries. In recent years, the formation of second-generation planets has been tested in circumbinary discs formed by the ejection of stellar material…
We review current progress in the study of the stellar populations of early-type galaxies, both locally and at intermediate redshifts. In particular, we focus on the ages of these galaxies and their evolution in hopes of determining the…
Galaxies form and evolve in the context of their local and large-scale environments. Their baryonic content that we observe with imaging and spectroscopy is intimately connected to the properties of their dark matter halos, and to their…
Imaging and resolved spectroscopy reveal varying environmental conditions in our dynamic solar system. Many key advances have focused on how these conditions change over time. Observatory-level commitments to conduct annual observations of…
The Chandra X-ray Observatory has completed a remarkable twenty years in orbit. A large part of the science program of Chandra during this time has involved the study of stars and their planetary systems. This primer aims to give the reader…
Recent detections of gravitational waves from merging binary black holes opened new possibilities to study the evolution of massive stars and black hole formation. In particular, stellar evolution models may be constrained on the basis of…