Empirical Mass-Loss Rates across the Upper Hertzsprung-Russell-Diagram


Claus Leitherer

STScI

I provide an overview of the empirical mass-loss rates of hot and cool luminous stars. Stellar species included in this talk are luminous OB stars, Wolf-Rayet stars, asymptotic giant branch stars, and red supergiants. I discuss the scaling of mass loss with stellar properties, with special emphasis on the influences of chemical abundances. Observational errors and systematic uncertainties are still substantial and vary with stellar type. These uncertainties are a major impediment for the construction of reliable stellar evolution models.

Reference: To appear in "Hot And Cool: Bridging Gaps in Massive Star Evolution", eds. C. Leitherer, Ph. D. Bennett, P. W. Morris & J. Th. van Loon (San Francisco: ASP)
Status: Conference proceedings

Weblink: http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0903.0608

Comments:

Email: leitherer@stsci.edu