Related papers: Stellar Forensics I: Cooling Curves
We use a series of N-body/smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations and analytic arguments to show that the presence of an effective temperature floor in the interstellar medium at T_F ~ 10^4 K naturally explains the tendency for low-mass…
The masses of the white dwarfs in a binary carry information about previous mass-transfer phases. The core mass -- radius relation of low-mass giants gives the size of the progenitor of a helium white dwarf at the moment it last filled its…
We present full evolutionary calculations appropriate for the study of hydrogen-rich DA white dwarfs. This is done by evolving white dwarf progenitors from the zero age main sequence, through the core hydrogen burning phase, the helium…
We present a numerical code intended for calculating stellar evolution in close binary systems. In doing so, we consider that mass transfer episodes occur when the stellar size overflows the corresponding Roche lobe. In such situation we…
From an examination of ~18,000 Kepler light curves of K- and M-stars we find some 500 which exhibit rotational periods of less than 2 days. Among such stars, approximately 50 show two or more incommensurate periodicities. We discuss the…
Binary systems composed of a recycled millisecond pulsar and a stellar companion in close orbit could be excellent sites to diagnose pulsar winds. In such systems, the pulsar outflow irradiates and heats up the companion atmosphere, which…
The values of electrical conductivity of plasma of stars with a magnetic field or moving in the magnetic field of the other component in a binary system could be of significant interest, since they are useful for the study of thermal…
The Kepler Mission has acquired 33.5d of continuous one-minute photometry of KPD 1946+4340, a short-period binary system that consists of an sdB and a white dwarf. In the light curve, eclipses are clearly seen, with the deepest occurring…
Microlensing can provide an important tool to study binaries, especially those composed of faint or dark objects. However, accurate analysis of binary-lens light curves is often hampered by the well-known degeneracy between close (s<1) and…
White dwarf evolution is essentially a gravothermal cooling process, which,for cool white dwarfs, sensitively depends on the treatment of the outer boundary conditions. We provide detailed outer boundary conditions appropriate for computing…
The prediction of the spins of the compact remnants is a fundamental goal of the theory of stellar evolution. Here, we confront the predictions for white dwarf spins from evolutionary models including rotation with observational…
We carry out a comprehensive smooth particle hydrodynamics simulation survey of double-degenerate white dwarf binary mergers of varying mass combinations in order to establish correspondence between initial conditions and remnant…
According to the recycling scenario, millisecond pulsars (MSPs) have evolved from low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). Their orbits are expected to be circular due to tidal interactions during the binary evolution, as observed in most of the…
I review the optical and near-infrared spectral characteristics of the extremely cool dwarfs grouped under the new classification of type L. These include both very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, and we discuss the likely temperature…
We have measured the orbital parameters of seven close binaries, including six new objects, in a radial velocity survey of 38 objects comprising a hot subdwarf star with orbital periods ranging from ~0.17 to 3 d. One new system, GALEX…
We report detection of the binary companion to the millisecond pulsar J2302+4442 based on the deep observations performed with the Gran Telescopio Canarias. The observations revealed an optical source with $r'$ = 23.33$\pm$0.02 and…
We present a new technique to determine age and metallicity of old stellar populations (globular clusters and elliptical galaxies) using an iterative principal component analysis on narrow band (Str\"omgren) colors. Our technique is capable…
One of the most effective ways to test stellar evolutionary models is to measure dynamical masses for binary systems at a range of temperatures. In this paper, we present orbits of three young K+M binary systems in Taurus (Hubble~4, FF~Tau,…
We present the detection of non-radial oscillations in a hot, helium-atmosphere white dwarf using 78.7 d of nearly uninterrupted photometry from the Kepler space telescope. With an effective temperature >30,000 K, PG 0112+104 becomes the…
In a well-aimed search based on the recently published Gaia~DR2 radial velocity data and performed with the robotic TIGRE telescope, we have discovered 19 bright ($m_V<7.66$~mag) spectroscopic binary stars. We present the radial velocity…