Stellar Structure and Evolution

Abstract

The attempt to understand the physics of the structure of stars and their change in time – their evolution – has been bothering many physicists and astronomers ever since the last century. This long chain of successful research is well documented not only by numerous papers in the corresponding journals but also by a series of books. Some of them are so excellently written that despite their age they can still be recommended and not only as documents of the state of the art at that time. A few outstanding examples are the books of Emden (1907), Eddington (1926), Chandrasekhar (1939), and Schwarzschild (1958). But our science has rapidly expanded in the last few decades, and new aspects have emerged which could not even be anticipated, say, 30 years ago and which today have to be carefully explored. This does not mean, however, that our ambition is to present a complete account of the latest and most refined numerical results. This can well be left to the large and growing number of excellent review articles. This book is intended rather to be a textbook that will help students and teachers to understand these results as far as possible and present them in a simple and clear manner. We know how difficult this is since we ourselves have tried for the largest part of our scientific career to understand “how the stars work” – and then to make others believe it. In these attempts we have found that often enough a simplified analytical example can be more helpful than the discussion of an exceptionally beautiful numerical solution. Thereforewe do not hesitate to includemany simple considerations and estimates, if necessary, even at the expense of rigour and the latest results. The reader should also note that the list of references given in this book is not intended to represent a table of honour for the (known and unknown) heroes of the theory of stellar structure; it is merely designed to help the beginner to find a few first paths in the literature jungle and presents those papers from which we have more or less randomly chosen the numbers for figures and numerical examples (There are others of at least the same quality!).