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

2009/03/03 by Claus Leitherer, Leitherer, Claus
Medicine · #FOS: Physical sciences #MRI in cancer diagnosis #Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0903.0608

openalex publication_date 2009/03/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

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.

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