Related papers: The importance of binary stars
Binary stars are pairs of stars that are gravitationally bound, providing in some cases accurate measurements of their masses and radii. As such, they serve as excellent testbeds for the theory of stellar structure and evolution. Moreover,…
Binary stars are as common as single stars. Binary stars are of immense importance to astrophysicists because that they allow us to determine the masses of the stars independent of their distances. They are the cornerstone of the…
Massive stars play a major role in the evolution of their host galaxies, and serve as important probes of the distant Universe. It has been established that the majority of massive stars reside in close binaries and will interact with their…
Stellar models of massive single stars are still plagued by major uncertainties. Testing and calibrating against observations is essential for their reliability. For this purpose one preferably uses observed stars that have never…
The presence of a nearby companion alters the evolution of massive stars in binary systems, leading to phenomena such as stellar mergers, X-ray binaries and gamma-ray bursts. Unambiguous constraints on the fraction of massive stars affected…
Binary stars are dynamical systems formed by two stars that are physically bound by the gravitational force. Binary stars are privileged laboratories, allowing one to measure the fundamental properties of stars but also potentially changing…
Nearby companions alter the evolution of massive stars in binary systems. Using a sample of Galactic massive stars in nearby young clusters, we simultaneously measure all intrinsic binary characteristics relevant to quantify the frequency…
It is now clear that central star binarity plays a key role in the formation and evolution of planetary nebulae, with a significant fraction playing host to close-binary central stars which have survived one or more common envelope…
Characterization of the binary fractions in star clusters is of fundamental importance for many fields in astrophysics. Observations indicate that the majority of stars are found in binary systems, while most stars with masses greater than…
Binary/multiple status can affect stars at all stages of their lifetimes: evolution onto the main sequence, properties on the main sequence, and subsequent evolution. 5 $M_\odot$ stars have provided a wealth of information about the binary…
The formation of massive stars is one of the major unsolved problems in stellar astrophysics. However, only few if any of these are found as single stars, on average massive stars have more than one companion. Many of them are born in dense…
Binary stars produce an array of dramatic astrophysical phenomena. They allow us to probe stellar structure, nuclear physics, and gravitational wave physics. They also produce the powerful supernovae that allow us to measure the scale of…
At high metallicity, a majority of massive stars have at least one close stellar companion. The evolution of such binaries is subject to strong interaction processes, heavily impacting the characteristics of their life-ending supernova and…
Many, possibly most, stars form in binary and higher-order multiple systems. Therefore, the properties and frequency of binary systems provide strong clues to the star-formation process, and constraints on star-formation models. However,…
Massive stars are among the most important objects in the Universe and many (most?) of them are formed in binaries. A selection of observational and theoretical facts that illustrate the importance of binaries and the evolution of massive…
Binary stars are of course more than two stars, but they are also at least two stars. In this chapter we will review some aspects of the physics governing the evolution of single massive stars. We will also review the uncertainties of key…
Planetary nebulae are traditionally considered to represent the final evolutionary stage of all intermediate-mass stars ($\sim$0.7-8Msol). Recent evidence seems to contradict this picture. In particular, since the launch of the Hubble Space…
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…
The obvious lack of the binary stellar systems that contain neutron stars (NS) is observed at present. Partly it is caused by the fact that it is very difficult to detect neutron star in a binary system if this relativistic component does…
We performed populations synthesis calculations of single stars and binaries and show that binary evolution is extremely important for Galactic astronomy. We review several binary evolution models and conclude that they give quite different…