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A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night; their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of light. The most prominent stars have been categorised into constellations and asterisms, and many of the brightest stars have proper names. Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. The observable universe contains an estimated 1022 to 1024 stars. Only about 4,000 of these stars are visible to the naked eye—all within the Milky Way galaxy.
A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: in an Earth sized volume, it packs a mass that is comparable to the Sun. No nuclear fusion takes place in a white dwarf; what light it radiates is from its residual heat. The nearest known white dwarf is Sirius B, at 8.6 light years, the smaller component of the Sirius binary star. There are currently thought to be eight white dwarfs among the hundred star systems nearest the Sun. The unusual faintness of white dwarfs was first recognized in 1910. The name white dwarf was coined by Willem Jacob Luyten in 1922.
A planetary nebula is a type of emission nebula consisting of an expanding, glowing shell of ionized gas ejected from red giant stars late in their lives.
A variable star is a star whose brightness as seen from Earth changes systematically with time. This variation may be caused by a change in emitted light or by something partly blocking the light, so variable stars are classified as either:
Supergiants are among the most massive and most luminous stars. Supergiant stars occupy the top region of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram with absolute visual magnitudes between about −3 and −8. The temperature range of supergiant stars spans from about 3,400 K to over 20,000 K.
Red supergiants (RSGs) are stars with a supergiant luminosity class and a stellar classification K or M. They are the largest stars in the universe in terms of volume, although they are not the most massive or luminous. Betelgeuse and Antares A are the brightest and best known red supergiants (RSGs), indeed the only first magnitude red supergiant stars.
A giant star has a substantially larger radius and luminosity than a main-sequence star of the same surface temperature. They lie above the main sequence on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram and correspond to luminosity classes II and III. The terms giant and dwarf were coined for stars of quite different luminosity despite similar temperature or spectral type by Ejnar Hertzsprung in 1905 or 1906.
Van Maanen 2, or van Maanen's Star, is the closest known solitary white dwarf to the Solar System. It is a dense, compact stellar remnant no longer generating energy and has equivalent to about 68% of the Sun's mass but only 1% of its radius. At a distance of 14.1 light-years it is the third closest of its type of star after Sirius B and Procyon B, in that order. Discovered in 1917 by Dutch–American astronomer Adriaan van Maanen, Van Maanen 2 was the third white dwarf identified, after 40 Eridani B and Sirius B, and the first solitary example.
The asymptotic giant branch (AGB) is a region of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram populated by evolved cool luminous stars. This is a period of stellar evolution undertaken by all low- to intermediate-mass stars (about 0.5 to 8 solar masses) late in their lives.
IK Pegasi is a binary star system in the constellation Pegasus. It is just luminous enough to be seen with the unaided eye, at a distance of about 154 light years from the Solar System.
NGC 2867 is an elliptical Type II planetary nebula in the southern constellation of Carina, just over a degree to the NNW of the star Iota Carinae. It was discovered by John Herschel on April 1, 1834. Herschel initially thought he might have found a new planet, but on the following night he checked again and discovered it had not moved. The nebula is located at a distance of 7,270 light-years from the Sun.
A pulsating white dwarf is a white dwarf star whose luminosity varies due to non-radial gravity wave pulsations within itself. Known types of pulsating white dwarfs include DAV, or ZZ Ceti, stars, with hydrogen-dominated atmospheres and the spectral type DA; DBV, or V777 Her, stars, with helium-dominated atmospheres and the spectral type DB; and GW Vir stars, with atmospheres dominated by helium, carbon, and oxygen, and the spectral type PG 1159. GW Vir stars may be subdivided into DOV and PNNV stars; they are not, strictly speaking, white dwarfs but pre-white dwarfs which have not yet reached the white dwarf region on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. A subtype of DQV stars, with carbon-dominated atmospheres, has also been proposed, and in May 2012, the first extremely low mass variable (ELMV) white dwarf was reported.
PG 1159-035 is the prototypical PG 1159 star after which the class of PG 1159 stars was named. It was discovered in the Palomar-Green survey of ultraviolet-excess stellar objects and, like the other PG 1159 stars, is in transition between being the central star of a planetary nebula and being a white dwarf.
A luminous supersoft X-ray source is an astronomical source that emits only low energy X-rays. Soft X-rays have energies in the 0.09 to 2.5 keV range, whereas hard X-rays are in the 1–20 keV range. SSSs emit few or no photons with energies above 1 keV, and most have effective temperature below 100 eV. This means that the radiation they emit is highly ionizing and is readily absorbed by the interstellar medium. Most SSSs within our own galaxy are hidden by interstellar absorption in the galactic disk. They are readily evident in external galaxies, with ~10 found in the Magellanic Clouds and at least 15 seen in M31.
An extreme helium star is a low-mass supergiant that is almost devoid of hydrogen, the most common chemical element of the Universe. Since there are no known conditions where stars devoid of hydrogen can be formed from molecular clouds, it is theorized that they are the product of the mergers of helium-core and carbon-oxygen core white dwarfs.
A red giant is a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass in a late phase of stellar evolution. The outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous, making the radius large and the surface temperature around 5,000 K [K] or lower. The appearance of the red giant is from yellow-white to reddish-orange, including the spectral types K and M, sometimes G, but also class S stars and most carbon stars.
V605 Aquilae, in the constellation Aquila, is the variable central star of the planetary nebula Abell 58. It is a highly unusual hydrogen-deficient carbon-rich star.
A hydrogen-deficient star is a type of star that has little or no hydrogen in its atmosphere. Hydrogen deficiency is unusual in a star, as hydrogen is typically the most common element in a stellar atmosphere. Despite being rare, there are a variety of star types that display a hydrogen deficiency.
CR Boötis is an interacting binary system in the northern constellation of Boötes, abbreviated CR Boo. It is one of the best-known AM Canum Venaticorum stars. The system varies widely in brightness, ranging in apparent visual magnitude from 13.6 down to 17.5. The distance to this system is approximately 1,150 light years from the Sun, based on parallax measurements.
Abell 30 is a planetary nebula located in the constellation of Cancer, at a distance of 5,500 light years. It belongs in the rare category of born-again planetary nebulae, in which stellar activity started up again after the creation of the planetary nebula.
References
- ↑ Jaschek & Jaschek: CARBON C
- 1 2 Huegelmeyer, S. D.; Dreizler, S.; Werner, K.; Krzesinski, J.; Nitta, A.; Kleinman, S. J. (2006). "Observational constraints on the evolutionary connection between PG 1159 stars and DO white dwarfs". arXiv: astro-ph/0610746 .
- 1 2 Werner, Klaus; Herwig, Falk (2006). "The Elemental Abundances in Bare Planetary Nebula Central Stars and the Shell Burning in AGB Stars". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 118 (840): 183. arXiv: astro-ph/0512320 . Bibcode:2006PASP..118..183W. doi:10.1086/500443.
- ↑ Green, R. F.; Schmidt, M.; Liebert, J. (1986). "The Palomar-Green Catalog of Ultraviolet-Excess Stellar Objects". The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. 61: 305. Bibcode:1986ApJS...61..305G. doi:10.1086/191115.
- ↑ Koesterke, Lars; Werner, Klaus (1998). "Determination of Mass-Loss Rates of PG 1159 Stars from Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopy". The Astrophysical Journal. 500 (1): L55 –L59. Bibcode:1998ApJ...500L..55K. doi:10.1086/311383.
- ↑ Winget, D. E. (1998). "Asteroseismology of white dwarf stars". Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. 10 (49): 11247–11261. Bibcode:1998JPCM...1011247W. doi:10.1088/0953-8984/10/49/014.
- 1 2 Quirion, P. -O.; Fontaine, G.; Brassard, P. (2007). "Mapping the Instability Domains of GW vir Stars in the Effective Temperature-Surface Gravity Diagram". The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. 171 (1): 219. Bibcode:2007ApJS..171..219Q. doi:10.1086/513870.
- ↑ McGraw, J. T.; Starrfield, S. G.; Liebert, J.; Green, R. (1979). "PG 1159-035: A New, Hot, Non-Da Pulsating Degenerate". IAU Colloq. 53: White Dwarfs and Variable Degenerate Stars: 377. Bibcode:1979wdvd.coll..377M.
- ↑ Kholopov, P. N.; Samus, N. N.; Kazarovets, E. V.; Perova, N. B. (1985). "The 67th Name-List of Variable Stars". Information Bulletin on Variable Stars. 2681: 1. Bibcode:1985IBVS.2681....1K.
- ↑ Nagel, T.; Werner, K. (2004). "Detection of non-radial g-mode pulsations in the newly discovered PG 1159 star HE 1429-1209". Astronomy and Astrophysics. 426. arXiv: astro-ph/0409243 . Bibcode:2004A&A...426L..45N. doi:10.1051/0004-6361:200400079.
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