Related papers: Variability and nature of the binary in the Red Re…
Orbits of stellar binaries are in general eccentric. These eccentricities encode information about their early lives. Here, we use thousands of main-sequence binaries from the Gaia DR3 catalog to reveal that, binaries inwards of a few AU…
I argue that the slowly expanding biconical structure of the Red Rectangle--a nebula around the post asymptotic giant branch binary stellar system HD 44179--can be formed by intermittent jets blown by the accreting companion. The bright…
This paper presents an analysis of a series of spectra in the Red Rectangle nebula. Only the reddest part of the spectra can safely be attributed to light from the nebula, and indicates Rayleigh scattering by the gas, in conformity with the…
We analyze the observed distribution of the orbital eccentricity and period of binary radio pulsars in globular clusters using computational tools to simulate binary-single star interactions. Globular clusters have different groups of…
We present an analysis of 168 oscillating red giants from NASA's $Kepler$ mission that exhibit anomalous peaks in their Fourier amplitude spectra. These peaks result from ellipsoidal variations which are indicative of binary star systems,…
A rich zoo of peculiar objects forms when Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars, undergo interactions in a binary system. For example, Barium (Ba) stars are main-sequence and red-giant stars that accreted mass from the outflows of a former…
Circumbinary discs are commonly observed around post-asymptotic giant branch (AGB) systems and are known to play an important role in their evolution. Several studies have pointed out that a circumbinary disc interacts through resonances…
We have investigated the long-term X-ray variability, defined as the root-mean-square (rms) of the ASM RXTE light curves, of a set of galactic Be/X-ray binaries and searched for correlations with system parameters, such as the spin period…
Recent work (Corradi et al. 2015, Jones et al. 2016) has shown that the phenomenon of extreme abundance discrepancies, where recombination line abundances exceed collisionally excited line abundances by factors of 10 or more, seem to be…
We review X-ray flux modulation from X-ray binaries on time scales corresponding to the orbital period and those at longer time scales (so called superorbital). Those modulations provide a powerful tool to constrain geometry of the…
Stars are generally spherical, yet their gaseous envelopes often appear non-spherical when ejected near the end of their lives. This quirk is most notable during the planetary nebula phase when these envelopes become ionized. Interactions…
We present new optical spectra of the nearby, bright, planetary nebula NGC 6778. The nebula has been known to emit strong recombination lines for more than 40 years but this is the first detailed study of its abundances. Heavy element…
There is a class of binary post-AGB stars (binary system including a post-AGB star) that are surrounded by Keplerian disks and outflows resulting from gas escaping from the disk. To date, there are seven sources that have been studied in…
The orbital angular momentum of a close-orbiting giant planet can be sufficiently large that, if transferred to the envelope of the host star during the red giant branch (RGB) evolution, it can spin-up the star's rotation to unusually large…
The recent discovery of long-period eccentric binaries hosting a He-WD or a sdB star has been challenging binary-star modelling. Based on accurate determinations of the stellar and orbital parameters for IP Eri, a K0 + He-WD system, we…
The symbiotic X-ray binary GX 1+4 possesses a number of peculiar properties that have been studied since the early 1970s. In particular, the orbital period has been a point of debate for many years, until radial velocity measurements were…
The objective of this work is to determine what fraction of red-giant (RG) stars shows photometric rotational modulation, and understand its origin. One of the underlying questions is the role of close binarity in this population, standing…
B[\,e\,] supergiants are a rare and unusual class of massive and luminous stars, characterised by opaque circumstellar envelopes. GG Carinae is a binary whose primary component is a B[\,e\,] supergiant and whose variability has remained…
The proto-planetary Red Rectangle nebula is powered by HD 44179, a spectroscopic binary (P = 318 d), in which a luminous post-AGB component is the primary source of both luminosity and current mass loss. Here, we present the results of a…
We present narrow-band images of the Red Rectangle (RR) nebula which reveal the distinct morphologies of this intriguing nebula in different optical emission bands. The morphology of the RR nebula in blue luminescence (BL) and extended red…