Related papers: Current Unsolved Problems in Planetary Nebulae Res…
Today, we know ~4330 exoplanets orbiting their host stars in ~3200 planetary systems. The diversity of these exoplanets is large, and none of the known exoplanets is a twin to any of the solar system planets, nor is any of the known…
The theory of stellar evolution plays a central role in astrophysics as stellar models are used to infer properties for Galactic and Extragalactic stellar populations as well as exoplanetary systems. However, despite decades of experience,…
We review recent studies on the morphology and distribution with respect to the galactic plane of planetary nebulae (PNs), as well as recent advances in MHD modeling of PNs. We discuss a tentative explanation for the connection between…
We present chemical abundances for planetary nebulae and H II regions in the Local Group dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822 based upon spectroscopy obtained at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope using the Multi-Object Spectrograph. From these…
Important results achieved over the last years on supernova remnants, planetary nebulae and superbubbles are briefly reviewed in the context of X-ray observations. I intend to review the important open scientific questions in these fields,…
Binaries have played a crucial role many times in the history of modern astronomy and are doing so again in the rapidly evolving exploration of the Kuiper Belt. The large fraction of transneptunian objects that are binary or multiple, 48…
The initial conditions, physics, and outcome of planet formation are now constrained by detailed observations of protoplanetary disks, laboratory experiments, and the discovery of thousands of extrasolar planetary systems. These…
The basic geometry of the Solar System -- the shapes, spacings, and orientations of the planetary orbits -- has long been a subject of fascination as well as inspiration for planet formation theories. For exoplanetary systems, those same…
Binarity and mass transfer appear to play a key role in the shaping and, possibly, formation of planetary nebulae (PNe), thereby explaining the large fraction of axisymmetric morphologies. I present the binary hypothesis for PNe and its…
Over the last half-century quantitative stellar spectroscopy has made great progress. However, most stellar abundance analyses today still employ rather simplified models, which can introduce severe systematic errors swamping the…
Formation of the first planetesimals remains an unsolved problem. Growth by sticking must initiate the process, but multiple studies have revealed a series of barriers that can slow or stall growth, most of them due to nebula turbulence. In…
The extended nebulae formed as pulsar winds expand into their surroundings provide information about the composition of the winds, the injection history from the host pulsar, and the material into which the nebulae are expanding.…
While in the past spheroidicity was assumed, and still is used in modeling of most nebulae, we know now that only a small number of planetary nebulae (PNe) are really spherical or at least nearly round. Round planetary nebulae are the…
This chapter of the book Planetary Ring Systems addresses the origin of planetary rings, one of the least understood processes related to planet formation and evolution. Whereas rings seem ubiquitous around giant planets, their great…
Extragalactic surveys in the emission line of [O III] 5007 have provided us with the absolute line strengths of large, homogeneous sets of planetary nebulae. These data have been used to address a host of problems, from the measurement of…
Binary star systems are assumed to be co-natal and coeval, thus to have identical chemical composition. In this work we aim to test the hypothesis that there is a connection between observed element abundance patterns and the formation of…
For two decades the hot big-bang model as been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not answered by the standard cosmology and…
The role of central star binarity in the shaping of planetary nebulae (PNe) has been the subject of much debate, with single stars believed to be incapable of producing the most highly collimated morphologies. However, observational support…
Understanding where elements were formed has been a key goal in astrophysics for nearly a century, with answers involving cosmology, stellar burning, and cosmic explosions. Since 1957, the origin of the heaviest elements (formed via the…
Extensive photometric stellar surveys show that many main sequence stars show emission at infrared and longer wavelengths that is in excess of the stellar photosphere; this emission is thought to arise from circumstellar dust. The presence…