Understanding the Elusive Dwarf Carbon Star
Abstract
Description
Most stars in our Galaxy with photospheric C/O>1 (carbon stars) are not giants but dwarfs. The newly-recognized class of dwarf carbon (dC) stars joins the growing family of stars with peculiar abundances that are now recognized as products of mass-transfer binary (MTB) evolution. The dozen examples now known span a wide range of evolutionary histories, ages, and abundances. These stars can already provide some much-needed constraints on the formation of AGB C stars in the disk and spheroid populations, and on the parameters characterizing binary evolution there. A larger sample of dCs, with some bright members, would hasten our progress.
8 pages, Invited Talk in IAU Symposium 177: The Carbon Star Phenomenon, ed. R. F. Wing (Kluwer, in press)
8 pages, Invited Talk in IAU Symposium 177: The Carbon Star Phenomenon, ed. R. F. Wing (Kluwer, in press)