35. Stellar Constitution

Abstract

During the period under review, theoretical work in the field of stellar constitution and evolution of stars has been effectively continued by several teams permanently working in Belgium, Denmark, France, German Democratic Republic, German Federal Republic, Italy, Japan, Poland, the United Kingdom, the U.S.A., the U.S.S.R. as well as by individual scientists in Argentina, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, India, Sweden and others. Most attention has been given during the past three years to analysis of late stages of stellar evolution, rotation, evolution of binaries, loss of mass on various stages of evolution, stellar stability, neutrino astrophysics, physical processes in the presupernovae stage. The discovery of pulsars has raised extremely the general interest for white dwarfs and neutron stars, and consequently the number of papers with new hypotheses concerning quasi-stellar sources has substantially dropped.Many new evolutionary sequences of stellar models for various masses and different chemical compositions have been computed using improved numerical techniques and large computing programs. It is regretted that many of these results are difficult to compare mainly because of the differences in the input physics and the way the numerical results are being published. This is a field in which a closer international co-operation is highly desirable, especially on the following points: exchange of ideas on the programs presently under way and the planned programs in order to avoid unnecessary duplications: agreement on the numerical results which should be published; exchange of technical informations: (input physics, computing methods, detailed results of computations, opacity tables, etc.). Several attempts in this direction have been undertaken during the period under review (for example, Commission 35 Circular Letters NN 1–7 containing information on current work, publication by the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences of the Cox and Stewart’s Opacity Tables for 23 mixtures, several joint international projects for using the same programs, etc.), but the problem still remains to be solved.