Related papers: A surprisingly large asymmetric ejection from Mira…
During their late pulsating phase, AGB stars expel most of their mass in the form of massive dusty envelopes, an event that largely controls the composition of interstellar matter. The envelopes, however, are distant and opaque to visible…
In the recent literature there has been some doubt as to the reliability of CO multi-transitional line observations as a mass-loss-rate estimator for AGB stars. Mass-loss rates for 10 intermediate- to high-mass-loss-rate AGB stars are…
The luminosities and periods of obscured AGB stars in the LMC are discussed using a combination of ISO and ground-based infrared photometry. The bolometric luminosities of these stars fall close to an extrapolation of the period-luminosity…
A rich zoo of peculiar objects forms when Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars, undergo interactions in a binary system. For example, Barium (Ba) stars are main-sequence and red-giant stars that accreted mass from the outflows of a former…
The mechanism of mass loss in late evolutionary stages of low- and intermediate-mass stars is not yet well understood. Therefore, it is crucial to study the dynamics of the region within a few stellar radii, where the wind acceleration is…
During their evolution, Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars experience a high mass-loss which leads to the formation of a Circumstellar Envelope (CSE) of dust and gas. The mass-loss process is the most important phenomenon during this…
In this study, we examine photoionization outflows during the late stages of galaxy mergers, with a specific focus on the relation between observed velocity of outflowing gas and the apparent effects of dust extinction. We used the…
Evolved low- to intermediate-mass stars are known to shed their gaseous envelope into a large, dusty, molecule-rich circumstellar nebula which typically develops a high degree of structural complexity. Most of the large-scale, spatially…
We reconsider the origin and processing of dust in elliptical galaxies. We theoretically formulate the evolution of grain size distribution, taking into account dust supply from asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and dust destruction by…
We present the discovery of a huge (19$\arcmin$ $\times$ 16$\arcmin$) dust ring surrounding a bright (V = 10.60) red star. The dust ring has, at D = 700 pc, a diameter of 4 pc, and a central hole of ~1.5 pc across. Part of the shell is also…
We present contemporaneous high-angular-resolution millimeter imaging and visible polarimetric imaging of the nearby asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star W Hya to better understand the dynamics and dust formation within a few stellar radii.…
We investigate the uncertainty in surface abundances and yields of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars. We apply three different mass loss laws to a 1.5 solar mass star of metallicity Z=0.008 at the beginning of the thermally pulsing…
The aim of this work is to use full evolutionary models to derive observational constraints on the mass loss rate of the upper Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars. The observations used to constrain the models are the relative number of…
We present an empirical determination of the mass-loss rate as a function of stellar luminosity and effective temperature, for oxygen-rich dust-enshrouded Asymptotic Giant Branch stars and red supergiants. To this aim we obtained optical…
Abundance anomalies observed in globular cluster stars indicate pollution with material processed by hydrogen burning. Two main sources have been suggested: asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and massive stars rotating near the break-up…
Galaxy mergers play a critical role in galaxy evolution - altering the size, morphology, dynamics and composition of galaxies. So far, galaxy mergers have mostly been identified through visual inspection of their rest-frame optical and NIR…
We present continuum and molecular line emission ALMA observations of OH 231.8+4.2, a well studied bipolar nebula around an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star. The high angular resolution (~0.2-0.3 arcsec) and sensitivity of our ALMA maps…
We perform numerical simulations to investigate the stellar wind from interacting binary stars. Our aim is to find analytical formulae describing the outflow structure. In each binary system the more massive star is in the asymptotic giant…
We are studying a class of binary post-AGB stars that seem to be systematically surrounded by equatorial disks and slow outflows. Although the rotating dynamics had only been well identified in three cases, the study of such structures is…
We present \emph{Spitzer} IRS data on 19 asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, complementing existing published data sets of carbon stars in both Magellanic Clouds and the Milky Way, to investigate the effects…