35. Stellar Constitution (Constitution Des Étoiles)

Extract

This report of Commission 35, as in past reports, consists of some details of only a few selected topics. This is necessary because a survey of the entire field of stellar formation, structure, stability, evolution, explosion, and nucleosynthesis for the three year period from mid-1984 to mid-1987 would be excessively long. Our topics here, in order from early to late evolutionary pahses are: Convective Overshooting (N.H. Baker), Mass Loss (I. Appenzeller), Novae (M. Livio), Presupernova Models and SN1987A (K. Nomoto), and Structure of X-Ray Bursting Neutron Stars (M.Y. Fujimoto and D. Sugimoto). In addition, Asteroseismology (H. Shibahashi) is reported briefly as one of the new disciplines now being developed. About two decades ago, Professor Martin Schwarzschild suggested convection, mass loss, and calculation of models through supernova stage as ones of the most important problems to attack. Though great progress has been achieved in these topics, we still have some fundamental questions concerning physical mechanisms involved. This is the reason why these topics are selected for this report.