Related papers: Stellar Sources of the Interstellar Medium
Massive stars blow powerful winds and eventually explode as supernovae. By doing so, they inject energy and momentum in the circumstellar medium, which is pushed away from the star and piles up to form a dense and expanding shell of gas.…
We use observations and evolutionary models of local objects to interpret a recent determination of the star-formation history of the universe. By fitting the global star-formation rate, the model predicts the ratio of spheroid to disk mass…
Most stars with birth masses larger than that of our Sun belong to binary or higher order multiple systems. Similarly, most stars have stellar winds. Radiation pressure and multiplicity create outflows of material that remove mass from the…
We review the final stages of stellar evolution, supernova properties, and chemical yields as a function of the progenitor's mass M. (1) 8 - 10 Ms stars are super-AGB stars when the O+Ne+Mg core collapses due to electron capture. These…
We present a multiphase model for the evolution of elliptical galaxies. Diffuse gas, molecular clouds, stars and remnants are taken into account. Cloud--cloud collisions and stimulated processes are the main causes of star formation. The…
Stellar mergers and common-envelope evolution are fast (dynamical-timescale) interactions in binary stars that drastically alter their evolution. They are key to understanding a plethora of astrophysical phenomena. Stellar mergers are…
Massive stars are the drivers of star formation and galactic dynamics due to their relatively short lives and explosive demises, thus impacting all of astrophysics. Since they are so impactful on their environments, through their winds on…
All types of supernovae (SNe), except Type Ia, have been observed to interact with their immediate circumstellar medium (CSM). This interaction can reveal their progenitor's histories, and constrain our ideas about the evolution of massive…
The chemically most primitive stars provide constraints on the nature of the first stellar objects that formed in the Universe; elements other than hydrogen, helium and traces of lithium within these objects were generated by…
The stellar origin of gamma-ray bursts can be explained by the rapid release of energy in a highly collimated, extremely relativistic jet. This in turn appears to require a rapidly spinning highly magnetised stellar core that collapses into…
Massive stars blow powerful winds and eventually explode as supernovae. By doing so, they inject energy and momentum in the circumstellar medium, which is pushed away from the star and piles up to form a dense and expanding shell of gas.…
A hot plasma is the dominant phase of the interstellar medium of early-type galaxies. Its origin can reside in stellar mass losses, residual gas from the formation epoch, and accretion from outside of the galaxies. Its evolution is linked…
A range of astronomical data indicates that ancient supernovae created the galactic environment of the Sun and sculpted the physical properties of the interstellar medium near the heliosphere. In this paper we review the characteristics of…
A field with particularly exciting results over the past few years is the study of the interaction of cosmic rays with interstellar matter. For star formation to take place, gas and dust need to be sufficiently cold for gravity to overcome…
Stars, and collections of stars, encode rich signatures of stellar physics and galaxy evolution. With properties influenced by both their environment and intrinsic nature, stars retain information about astrophysical phenomena that are not…
We summarise observations and our current understanding of the interstellar medium (ISM) in galaxies, which mainly consists of three phases: cold atomic or molecular gas and clouds, warm neutral or ionised gas, and hot ionised gas. These…
Molecules and dust are formed in and around the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and supernovae (SNe), and are ejected into the interstellar medium (ISM) through the stellar wind. The dust and gas contain elements newly synthesised in…
Massive stars are a major source of chemical elements in the cosmos, ejecting freshly produced nuclei through winds and core-collapse supernova explosions into the interstellar medium. Among the material ejected, long lived radioisotopes,…
The conditions that lead to self-regulated star formation, star bursts and the formation of massive stellar clusters are discussed. Massive stars have a strong impact on their environment, especially on the evolution of dwarf galaxies which…
The evolution of central stars of planetary nebulae was so far documented in just a few cases. However, spectra collected a few decades ago may provide a good reference for studying the evolution of central stars using the emission line…