Conveners
Dust production in low mass stars: Dust production in low mass stars
- Ciska Kemper (ASIAA)
Dust production in low mass stars: Dust production in low mass stars
- Ciska Kemper (ASIAA)
Stars in their late stages of evolution are generally considered to be major sources of interstellar dust. However, there is a long standing debate over the relative contributions by massive stars (both before and after they explode as supernovae), compared to low- and intermediate-mass stars, which expel a significant fraction of their total mass in stellar winds during the cool giant phase....
Outflows from asymptotic giant branch (AGB) and red supergiant (RSG) stars regulate the lifecycle of dust in the interstellar medium (ISM) in nearby galaxies. Metals produced in AGB nucleosynthesis are transported to the surface where they cool to form molecules and, further out, dust. The chemistry of this material depends on the surface atomic ratio of carbon to oxygen, resulting in either...
The effects of metallicity on both the dust production and mass loss of evolved stars have consequences for stellar masses, stellar lifetimes, the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae, and the origin of dust in the ISM. With the DUST in Nearby Galaxies with Spitzer (DUSTiNGS) survey, we have discovered samples of dusty evolved AGB stars out to the edge of the Local Group, reaching...
AGB stars are major contributors of dust in the universe, feeding newly produced elements into the surrounding interstellar medium in the form of gas and dust through their stellar winds.
The detailed modelling of these dense winds or outflows is therefore crucial for understanding both the chemical evolution of galaxies, and the dust production in the interstellar medium. The mass loss...
The origin and properties of dust in the universe, and the contribution from AGB stars, is a fundamental question in galaxy evolution. We constrain the properties of the dust grains in the thin detached shells around the carbon AGB stars R Scl, U Ant, V644 Sco, and DR Ser. The shells were created during recent thermal pulses, and the dust properties play a crucial role in understanding the...
