Related papers: Massive Stars in Transition
Current understanding of core collapse and thermonuclear supernovae is reviewed. Recent progress in unveiling the nature of cosmic gamma-ray bursts (GRB) is discussed, with the focus on the apparent link of several GRBs with an energetic…
Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs) are a class of massive blue supergiants exhibiting irregular and eruptive instability, sometimes accompanied by extreme mass loss. While they have often been considered to be a brief but very important…
We review the current basic picture of the evolution of massive stars and how their evolution and structure changes as a function of initial mass. We give an overview of the fate of modern (Pop I) and primordial (Pop III) stars with…
Almost since the beginning, massive stars and their resultant supernovae have played a crucial role in the Universe. These objects produce tremendous amounts of energy and new, heavy elements that enrich galaxies, encourage new stars to…
Van Marle et al. (2005) showed that circumstellar absorption lines in early Type Ib/c supernova and gamma-ray burst afterglow spectra may reveal the progenitor evolution of the exploding Wolf-Rayet star. While the quoted paper deals with…
We discuss four questions dealing with massive star evolution. The first one is about the origin of slowly rotating, non-evolved, nitrogen rich stars. We propose that these stars may originate from initially fast rotating stars whose…
After a brief review of the observational evidences indicating how the populations of Be stars, red/blue supergiants, Wolf-Rayet stars vary as a function of metallicity, we discuss the implications of these observed trend for our…
Stars more massive than about 8 Msun end their lives as a Supernova (SN), an event of fundamental importance Universe-wide. Theoretically, these stars have been expected to be either at the red supergiant, blue supergiant, or Wolf-Rayet…
Massive stars, by which we mean those stars exploding as core collapse supernovae, play a pivotal role in the evolution of the Universe. Therefore, the understanding of their evolution and explosion is fundamental in many branches of…
Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are massive ($\geq$10 M$_{\odot}$) evolved stars undergoing advanced nuclear burning in their cores, rapidly approaching the end of their lives as supernovae. Their powerful winds enrich the interstellar medium with…
The locations of massive stars (> 8 Msun) within their host galaxies is reviewed. These range from distributed OB associations to dense star clusters within giant HII regions. A comparison between massive stars and the environments of…
Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are the evolved descendants of the most massive stars and show emission-line dominated spectra formed in their powerful stellar winds. Marking the final evolution stage before core collapse, the standard picture of WR…
Massive stars less massive than ~30 Msol evolve into a red supergiant after the main sequence. Given a standard IMF, this means about 80% of all single massive stars will experience this phase. RSGs are dominated by convection, with a…
Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars comprise a class of stars whose spectra are dominated by strong, broad emission lines that are associated with copious mass loss. In the massive-star regime, roughly 90% of the known WR stars are thought to have…
Massive Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars comprise a spectroscopic class characterized by high temperatures (Teff > ~30 kK) and powerful and rapid stellar winds. Hydrogen-rich WR stars represent the most massive stars in existence (M > ~100 Msun),…
The yellow hypergiants are found in a stage between the massive Red Supergiants and the Wolf-Rayet stars. This review addresses current issues concerning the evolution of massive stars, concentrating on the transitional post-Red Supergiant…
We summarize the present status of the predictions of massive star models for the evolution of their surface properties. After discussing luminosity, temperature and chemical composition, we focus on the question whether massive stars may…
We review the effects of winds from massive O and B stars on the surrounding medium over the various stages of stellar evolution. Furthermore we discuss some of the implications for SNe and GRB evolution within this wind-blown medium.
Many of the properties of massive stars in external galaxies, such as chemical compositions, mass functions, and ionizing fluxes, can be derived from the study of the associated clouds of ionized gas. Moreover, the signatures of Wolf-Rayet…
Mass-loss rates during the red supergiant phase are very poorly constrained from an observational or theoretical point of view. However, they can be very high, and make a massive star lose a lot of mass during this phase, influencing…