Related papers: Planetary nebula or symbiotic Mira? Near infrared …
We have gathered a sample of 112 main-sequence stars with known debris disks. We collected published information and performed adaptive optics observations at Lick Observatory to determine if these debris disks are associated with binary or…
High-resolution HST imaging of the compact planetary nebula NGC 6644 has revealed two pairs of bipolar lobes and a central ring lying close to the plane of the sky. From mid-infrared imaging obtained with the Gemini Telescope, we have found…
The increase in discovered close binary central stars of planetary nebulae is leading to a sufficiently large sample to begin to make broader conclusions about the effect of close binary stars on common envelope evolution and planetary…
Symbiotic stars are interacting binaries with the longest orbital periods and their multi-component structure makes them rich astrophysical laboratories. The accretion of a high mass loss rate red giant wind on to a white dwarf (WD) makes…
It is well established that magnetars are neutron stars with extreme magnetic fields and young ages, but the evolutionary pathways to their creation are still uncertain. Since most massive stars are in binaries, if magnetars are a frequent…
Red novae are transients powered by collisions of non-compact stars. Among their progenitors are systems of evolved subgiants and giants stars. Remnants of such red novae display bipolar structures which have remarkably close…
Herschel's PACS instrument observed the environment of the binary system Mira Ceti in the 70 and 160 micron bands. These images reveal bright structures shaped as five broken arcs and fainter filaments in the ejected material of Mira's…
This paper reviews our knowledge on binary central stars of planetary nebulae and presents some personal opinions regarding their evolution. Three types of interactions are distinguished: type I, where the binary companion induces the mass…
We present near-infrared (0.8-1.8 $\mu$m) spectra of 105 bright (${m_{J}}$ $<$ 10) stars observed with the low resolution spectrometer on the rocket-borne Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER). As our observations are performed…
Shaping axi-symmetric planetary nebulae is easier if a companion interacts with a primary at the top of the asymptotic giant branch. To determine the impact of binarity on planetary nebula formation and shaping, we need to determine the…
The Local Group Census is a narrow- and broad-band survey of all the galaxies of the Local Group above dec = -30 deg, in progress at the 2.5m Isaac Newton telescope on La Palma. We discuss here the ability of the survey to detect symbiotic…
Context: The INTEGRAL hard X-ray observatory has revealed an emerging population of highly obscured X-ray binary systems through multi-wavelength observations. Previous studies have shown that many of these sources are high-mass X-ray…
High-resolution near-infrared HST NICMOS (F160W, F222M) images and polarization (2 um) observations were made of four bipolar proto-planetary nebulae (PPNs): IRAS 17150-3224, IRAS 17441-2411, IRAS 17245-3951, and IRAS 16594-4656. The first…
The majority of planetary nebulae (PNe) are not spherical, and current single-star models cannot adequately explain all the morphologies we observe. This has led to the Binary Hypothesis, which states that PNe are preferentially formed by…
It is now clear that a binary pathway is responsible for a significant fraction of planetary nebulae, and the continually increasing sample of known central binaries means that we are now in a position to begin to use these systems to…
I will review the latest results for the presence of diffuse light in the nearby universe and at intermediate redshift, and then discuss the latest results from hydrodynamical cosmological simulations of cluster formation on the expected…
We present the mid-infrared (mid-IR) period$-$luminosity relations (PLRs) using over 1000 Mira variables in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), for the four Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and the four Spitzer bands. These PLRs…
Many planetary nebulae (PNe) exhibit distinctly non-axisymmetric structure in either (i) the shape of the nebula, or (ii) in the off-centered position of the illuminating star. By examining a large number of well resolved images of PNe we…
We report the first spatially resolved radio continuum measurements of the Mira AB symbiotic binary system, based on observations obtained with the Very Large Array (VLA). This is the first time that a symbiotic binary has been resolved…
We search for very small-diameter galactic planetary nebulae (PNe) representing the earliest phases of PN evolution. A recently published IPHAS catalogue of Ha-emitting stars provides a useful base for this study as all sources present in…