Related papers: The lambda Bootis stars
Eclipsing binaries with M-type components are still rare objects. Strong observational biases have made that today only a few eclipsing binaries with component masses below 0.6 Msun and well-determined fundamental properties are known.…
Neutron stars are astrophysical laboratories of many extremes of physics. Their rich phenomenology provides insights into the state and composition of matter at densities which cannot be reached in terrestrial experiments. Since the core of…
Chemically peculiar (CP) stars are main-sequence A and B stars with abnormally strong or weak lines for certain elements. They generally have magnetic fields and all observables tend to vary with the same period. Chemically peculiar stars…
Understanding the formation of the first stars is one of the frontier topics in modern astrophysics and cosmology. Their emergence signaled the end of the cosmic dark ages, a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, leading to a…
Blue metal-poor stars (BMPs) are main sequence stars that appear bluer and more luminous than normal turnoff stars. They were originally singled out by using B-V and U-B colour cuts. Early studies found that a larger fraction of field BMP…
Substantial progress in the field of the Local Interstellar Medium has been largely due to recent launches of space missions, mostly in the UV and X-ray domains, but also to ground-based observations, mainly in high resolution spectroscopy.…
According to the hypothesis that strange quark matter may be the true ground state of matter at extremely high densities, strange quark stars should be stable and could exist in the Universe. It is possible that pulsars may actually be…
Understanding galaxy formation involves look-back and fossil-record studies of distant and nearby galaxies, respectively. Debris trails in our Galaxy's spheroidal halo of old stars provide evidence of "bottom-up" formation via tidal…
At present, there are several feasible observational probes of the first stars in the universe. Here, we examine the constraints on early stellar activity from the metallicity of the high-redshift Ly-$\alpha$ clouds, from the effects of…
About 10% of upper main sequence stars are characterised by the presence of chemical peculiarities, often found together with a structured magnetic field. The atmospheres of most of those chemically peculiar stars present surface spots,…
I review some recent progress made in our understanding of galaxy evolution and the cosmic history of star formation. Like bookends, the results obtained from deep ground-based spectroscopy and from the Hubble Deep Field imaging survey put…
We discuss the cosmological significance of the transition from the Pop III to Pop II mode of star formation in the early universe, and when and how it may occur in primordial galaxies. Observations that could detect this transition include…
In the past few years, astronomers have uncovered several very low-temperature, metal-poor stars with halo or thick disk kinematics and peculiar spectral and photometric properties, so-called ultracool subdwarfs. These include the first…
Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UFDs) are among the oldest and most metal-poor stellar systems in the Universe. Their metallicity distribution encodes the fossil record of the earliest star formation, feedback, and chemical enrichment,…
We briefly review the observational and theoretical investigations on Very Low Mass (VLM) stars. New evolutionary computations, extending toward the lower main sequence previous computations already given for globular cluster stars, are…
In the context of the standard model of particle physics, there is a definite upper limit to the density of stable compact stars. However, if a more fundamental level of elementary particles exists, in the form of preons, stability may be…
In these lecture notes I briefly discuss the present day situation and new discoveries in astrophysics of neutron stars focusing on isolated objects. The latter include soft gamma repeaters, anomalous X-ray pulsars, central compact objects…
We present different chemical evolution models for the ultrafaint dwarf galaxy Bootes I. We either assume that the galaxy accretes its mass through smooth infall of gas of primordial chemical composition (classical models) or adopt mass…
In this introductory chapter of the Special Issue entitled `The Structure and Evolution of Stars', we highlight the recent major progress made in our understanding in the physics that governs stellar interiors. In so doing, we combine…
The enigmatic oxygen sequence Wolf-Rayet (WO) stars represent a very late stage in massive star evolution, although their exact nature is still under debate. The spectra of most of the WO stars have never been analysed through detailed…