Related papers: Galactic Models and White Dwarf Populations
This review aims to give an overview of the contribution of the Hubble Space Telescope to our understanding of the detailed properties of Local Group dwarf galaxies and their older stellar populations. The exquisite stable high spatial…
Some aspects of the chemical evolution of late-type dwarf galaxies are reviewed, together with their implications on three issues of cosmological relevance: similarity to primeval galaxies, derivation of the primordial helium abundance,…
White dwarf stars are the most common final stage of stellar evolution. Since the serendipitous discovery of the first white dwarf by William Herschel and the first physical models by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Arthur Eddington, there…
White dwarfs are the most common endpoints of stellar evolution. They are often found in close binary systems in which the white dwarf is accreting matter from a companion star, either via an accretion disc or channelled along the white…
Within the Local Universe galaxies can be studied in great detail star by star, and here we review the results of quantitative studies in nearby dwarf galaxies. The Color-Magnitude Diagram synthesis method is well established as the most…
Properties of nearby dwarf galaxies are briefly discussed. Dwarf galaxies vary widely in their star formation histories, the ages of their subpopulations, and in their enrichment history. Furthermore, many dwarf galaxies show evidence for…
Observing the stars in our night sky tells us that giant, supergiant and hypergiant stars hold an unique importance in the understanding of stellar populations. Theoretical stellar models predict a rich tapestry of evolved stars. These…
We review current progress in the study of the stellar populations of early-type galaxies, both locally and at intermediate redshifts. In particular, we focus on the ages of these galaxies and their evolution in hopes of determining the…
A White Dwarf (WD) star and a main-sequence companion may interact through their different stellar evolution stages. This sort of binary population has historically helped us improve our understanding of binary formation and evolution…
Detection and analysis of Wolf-Rayet (WR) star populations in young starbursts is a powerful tool to reveal the properties of the star-forming events. We present new high S/N optical spectra of a sample of well-known WR galaxies, in which…
We summarize past and current surveys for Wolf-Rayet stars among the Local Group galaxies, emphasizing both the how and the why. Such studies are invaluable for helping us learn about massive star evolution, and for providing sensitive…
What can we learn from the somewhat arduous study of old stellar populations in nearby galaxies? Unless the nearby universe is subtly anomalous, it should contain a relatively normal selection of galaxies whose histories are representative…
The recent discovery of microlensing of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud has excited much interest in the nature of the lensing population. Detailed analyses indicate that the mass of these objects ranges from 0.3-0.8 solar masses,…
Statistical studies of astronomical data sets, in particular of cataloged properties for discrete objects, are central to astrophysics. One cannot model those objects' population properties or incidences without a quantitative understanding…
[Abridged] [...] AIMS: We aim to establish the stellar parameters and mass-loss rates of the Galactic WC stars. These data provide the empirical basis of studies of (i) the role of WC stars in the evolution of massive stars, (ii) the…
Abridged. White dwarf stars are the final evolutionary stage of the vast majority of stars, including our Sun. The study of white dwarfs has potential applications to different fields of astrophysics. In particular, they can be used as…
A number of so-called ultra-cool white dwarfs have been detected in different surveys so far. However, based on anecdotal evidence it is believed that most or all of these ultra-cool white dwarfs are low-mass products of binary evolution…
Today, we have a sufficiently complete picture of what the Wolf--Rayet (WR) stars are. Predictions of stellar evolution theory are in a good agreement with their parameters, estimated from observational data using stellar atmospheres codes;…
White Dwarfs (WDs) are the final evolutionary product of the vast majority of stars in the Universe. They are electron-degenerate structures characterized by no stable thermonuclear activity, and their evolution is generally described as a…
What the future holds for the stellar populations of the Milky Way Galaxy may (optimistically) be predicted by study of their past histories, as written in the chemical abundance distributions, angular momentum distributions, velocity…