Related papers: Massive Stars in Transition
Massive stars are essential to understand a variety of branches of astronomy including galaxy and star cluster evolution, nucleosynthesis and supernovae, pulsars and black holes. It has become evident that massive star evolution is very…
Wolf-Rayet stars have been detected in a large number of galaxies experiencing intense bursts of star formation. All stars initially more massive than a certain, metallicity-dependent, value are believed to experience the Wolf-Rayet phase…
The star-forming galaxies of the Local Group act as our laboratories for testing massive star evolutionary models. In this review, I briefly summarize what we believe we know about massive star evolution, and the connection between OB…
Massive stars and their supernovae are prominent sources of radioactive isotopes, the observations of which thus can help to improve our astrophysical models of those. Our understanding of stellar evolution and the final explosive endpoints…
Massive stars have a strong impact on their surroundings, in particular when they produce a core-collapse supernova at the end of their evolution. In these proceedings, we review the general evolution of massive stars and their properties…
The stellar winds of massive stars show large changes in mass-loss rates and terminal velocities during their evolution from O-star through the Luminous Blue Variable phase to the Wolf-Rayet phase. The luminosity remains approximately…
We investigate the fate of a collapsing stellar core, which is the final state of evolution of a massive, rotating star of a Wolf-Rayet type. Such stars explode as type I b/c supernovae, which have been observed in association with long…
We give a brief overview of where we stand with respect to some old and new questions bearing on how massive stars evolve and end their lifetime. We focus on the following key points that are further discussed by other contributions during…
We review potential mass-loss mechanisms in the various evolutionary stages of massive stars, from the well-known line-driven winds of O-stars and BA-supergiants to the less-understood winds from Red Supergiants. We discuss optically thick…
I review recent progress on understanding eruptions of unstable massive stars, with particular attention to the diversity of observed behavior in extragalatic optical transient sources that are generally associated with giant eruptions of…
The Wolf-Rayet (WR) phenomenon is widespread in astronomy. It involves classical WRs, very massive stars (VMS), WR central stars of planetary nebula CSPN [WRs], and supernovae (SNe). But what is the root cause for a certain type of object…
How massive stars end their lives remains an open question in the field of star evolution. While the majority of stars above 9 M_sun will become red supergiants (RSGs), the terminal state of these massive stars can be heavily influenced by…
We discuss, in the context of the single star scenario, the nature of the progenitors of Red Supergiants (RSG), of Luminous Blue Variables (LBV) and of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. These three different populations correspond to evolved phases of…
Massive stars have a profound influence on the Universe, but their formation remains poorly understood. We review the current status of observational and theoretical research in this field, describing the various stages of an evolutionary…
Wolf-Rayet stars (WRs) represent the end of a massive star's life as it is about to turn into a supernova. Obtaining complete samples of such stars across a large range of metallicities poses observational challenges, but presents us with…
In this paper, we discuss some consequences of rotation and mass loss on the evolved stages of massive star evolution. The physical reasons of the time evolution of the surface velocity are explained, and then we show how the late-time…
Massive stars are able to pursue their evolution through the whole sequence of burning phases. They are born hot and luminous, and live a short life before exploding as a supernova or collapsing directly into a black hole. They have a…
This chapter concentrates on the deaths of very massive stars, the events leading up to their deaths, and how mass loss affects the resulting death. The previous three chapters emphasized the theory of wind mass loss, eruptions, and core…
I review multiwavelength observations of material seen around different types of evolved massive stars (i.e. red supergiants, yellow hypergiants, luminous blue variables, B[e] supergiants, and Wolf-Rayet stars), concentrating on diagnostics…
We discuss the role of mass loss for the evolution of the most massive stars, highlighting the role of the predicted bi-stability jump that might be relevant for the evolution of rotational velocities during or just after the main sequence.…