Stellar Evolution in Real Time: Current and Future Expectations

Extract

Directly measuring stellar evolution may be accomplished in at least two distinctly different ways. The first approach will be observing it in real time as the phenomenon is taking place; the examples will include explosive events in recurrent novae, stellar oscillations in Cepheid and RR Lyrae variables, and mass flow in and out of interacting binaries. The second approach will be to observe a number of stars that are believed to belong to the same class at different stages of their evolutionary paths.

In this talk, I will focus on the first method of direct observations. The most direct method will probably be to observe images of the events thatwe wish to investigate. The same astronomical phenomena can and should alsobe studied using high-time and spectroscopic resolution data; however, thisis already being done with increasingly better spectral-and-temporal resolutions and will probably be reported elsewhere in this Joint Discussion. It is also noted that over the past two decades multiwavelength observations, using various telescopes on the ground and in space, have come to play a crucial role in astronomy, although I am not addressing this subject in this paper. I will talk primarily about imaging using interferometry that will soon become possible due to the advances in technology.