Related papers: A New Formation Mechanism for the Hottest Horizont…
Hot subluminous stars lying up to 0.7 mag below the extreme horizontal branch (EHB) are found in the UV color-magnitude diagrams of omega Cen and NGC 2808. Such stars are unexplained by canonical HB theory. In order to explore the origin of…
Blue hook stars are a class of subluminous extreme horizontal branch stars that were discovered in UV images of the massive globular clusters omega Cen and NGC 2808. These stars occupy a region of the HR diagram that is unexplained by…
Recent UV observations of the most massive Galactic globular clusters show a significant population of hot stars below the zero-age HB (``blue hook'' stars), which cannot be explained by canonical stellar evolution. Stars which suffer…
It is predicted that orbital decay by gravitational-wave radiation and tidal interaction will cause some close-binary stars to merge within a Hubble time. The merger of a helium-core white dwarf with a main-sequence star can produce a red…
Hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) are evolved core helium-burning stars with very thin hydrogen envelopes. In order to form an sdB, the progenitor has to lose almost all of its hydrogen envelope right at the tip of the red giant branch. In close…
Hot subluminous stars can be roughly divided into B- and O-types. Unlike the latter many sdBs are found in close binaries, indicating that binary evolution plays a vital role. Recent NLTE spectral analyses revealed that an evolutionary link…
We construct a speculative scenario for rotation-induced extra helium mixing to the envelope of horizontal branch (HB) stars. This scenario differs from previous ones in that the mixing occurs after the star has left the red giant branch…
We present FUSE spectra of three He-rich sdB stars. Two of these stars, PG1544+488 and JL87, reveal extremely strong C III lines, suggesting that they have mixed triple-alpha carbon from the deep interior out to their surfaces. Using TLUSTY…
Hot subdwarf stars with masses above $0.8 M_\odot$ ascend the helium giant branch after the end of core helium burning, before entering the white dwarf cooling track or exploding as type Ib/c supernovae. Such massive helium stars are…
The core helium-flash in low-mass stars with extreme mass loss occurs after the tip of the RGB, when the H-rich envelope is very thin. The low efficiency of the H-shell source enables the He-flash driven convective zone to penetrate H-rich…
The observed abundance variations in globular cluster red giants indicate that these stars may be mixing helium from the hydrogen shell outward into the envelope, presumably as a result of internal rotation. We have investigated the…
Hot subdwarfs are evolved low--mass stars that have survived core helium ignition and are now in (or recently finished with) the core helium burning stage. At the hot end of the Horizontal Branch (HB), many of these stars are multiperiodic…
Strong mass loss on the red giant branch (RGB) can result in the formation of extreme horizontal branch (EHB) stars. The EHB stars spend most of their He core and shell burning phase at high temperatures and produce copious ultraviolet…
Horizontal branch (HB) morphology is a complex multiple-parameter problem. Besides the metallicity, two other leading parameters are the mass loss rate (MLR) and the initial He abundance of the HB progenitors. Using the STAREV stellar…
It has been known for a long time that some red giants in globular clusters exhibit large star-to-star variations in the abundances of light elements that are not exhibited by field giants. This fact can be taken as evidence that the extra…
UV observations of some massive globular clusters uncovered a significant population of very hot stars below the hot end of the horizontal branch (HB), the so-called blue hook stars. This feature might be explained either as results of the…
We present a UV CMD spanning the hot horizontal branch (HB), blue straggler, and white dwarf populations of the globular cluster NGC 2808. These data were obtained with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). Although previous…
Hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) are evolved core helium-burning stars with very thin hydrogen envelopes. In order to form an sdB, the progenitor has to lose almost all of its hydrogen envelope right at the tip of the red giant branch. In binary…
Extremely hot horizontal branch (HB) stars and their progeny are widely considered to be responsible for the "ultraviolet upturn" (or UVX) phenomenon observed in elliptical galaxies and the bulges of spirals. Yet, the precise evolutionary…
Core helium burning is the dominant source of energy of extreme horizontal branch stars, as the hydrogen envelope is too small to contribute to the nuclear energy output. The evolution of each mass in the HR diagram occurs along vertical…