Related papers: Spectroscopic Binary Mass Determination using Rela…
Most extrasolar planets have been detected by their influence on their parent star, typically either gravitationally (the Doppler method) or by the small dip in brightness as the planet blocks a portion of the star (the transit method).…
To measure precise distances beyond the Magellanic Clouds and determine an accurate value of the Hubble constant, eclipsing binary systems composed of early-type stars can play a crucial role. However, it is fundamental to first obtain a…
Microlensing is one of the most promising methods of reconstructing the stellar mass function down to masses even below the hydrogen-burning limit. The fundamental limit to this technique is the presence of unresolved binaries, which can in…
Large light deflection angles are produced in the strong gravitational field regions around neutron stars and black holes. In the case of binary systems, part of the photons emitted from the companion star towards the collapsed object are…
Precise and reliable measurements of the masses and radii of neutron stars with a variety of masses would provide valuable guidance for improving models of the properties of cold matter with densities above the saturation density of nuclear…
New micro-satellite constellations enable unprecedented systematic monitoring applications thanks to their wide coverage and short revisit capabilities. However, the large volumes of images that they produce have uneven qualities, creating…
Pulsations and binarity are both common features of massive stars. The study of pulsating massive stars in eclipsing binary systems hold great potential for constraining stellar structure and evolution theory. However, prior to the all-sky…
Stellar mass plays a central role in our understanding of star formation and aging. Stellar astronomy is largely based on two maps, both dependent on mass, either indirectly or directly: the Hertzprung-Russell Diagram (HRD) and the…
Observations of binaries have traditionally provided the means for ascertaining stellar masses. Here, we use the published data on 8 pre-main-sequence pairs to gauge the accuracy of our own, recently calculated, evolutionary tracks (Palla &…
Detecting binary stars in photometric time series is traditionally done by measuring eclipses. This requires the orbital plane to be aligned with the observer. A new method without that requirement uses stellar oscillations to measure…
We present a model for the formation of high-mass close binary systems in the context of forming massive stars through gas accretion in the centres of stellar clusters. A low-mass wide binary evolves under mass accretion towards a high-mass…
The mass and anisotropy of an elliptical galaxy can be simultaneously determined from velocity dispersion and line profile shape measurements. We describe the principles, techniques, and limitations of this approach, and the results…
Determining the type of matter that is inside a neutron star (NS) has been a long-standing goal of astrophysics. Despite this, most of the NS equations of state (EOS) that predict maximum masses in the range 1.4-2.8 solar masses are still…
Gravitational-wave detections have revealed a previously unknown population of stellar mass black holes with masses above $20\, M_{\odot}$. These observations provide a new way to test models of stellar evolution for massive stars. By…
High-resolution Doppler spectroscopy is a powerful tool for identifying molecular species in the atmospheres of both transiting and non-transiting exoplanets. Currently, such data is analysed using cross-correlation techniques to detect the…
Compact objects undergoing mass transfer exhibit significant (and double-peaked) $H_{\alpha}$ emission lines. Recently, new methods have been developed to identify black hole X-ray binaries (BHXBs) and calculate their systematic parameters…
Galaxy surveys contain information on the largest scales via wide-angle and relativistic contributions. By combining two different galaxy populations, we can suppress the strong cosmic variance on ultra-large scales and thus enhance the…
In this contribution we present the properties of the most massive stars known by the end of 2013. We start with a summary of historical claims for stars with masses in excess of several hundreds, even thousands of solar masses. We then…
Mass and radius measurements of stars are important inputs for models of stellar structure. Binary stars are of particular interest in this regard, because astrometry and spectroscopy of a binary together provide the masses of both stars as…
Ultra-high intensity femtosecond lasers at focus are now routinely used for relativistic motion of charged particles with peak intensities over 10^18W/cm^2. Such high-field experiments are very sensitive to the value of the peak intensity.…