Ecology of Blue Straggler Stars

TL;DR

This paper reviews the diverse aspects of blue straggler stars, highlighting their complex nature and significance in understanding stellar evolution, cluster dynamics, and stellar populations, based on insights from a dedicated workshop and subsequent book chapters.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive synthesis of current knowledge on blue straggler stars, integrating recent research and expert reviews into a foundational resource.

Findings

Blue straggler stars challenge simple stellar evolution models.

Understanding BSS requires interdisciplinary knowledge across astronomy.

The workshop and book provide a unified view of BSS research.

Abstract

The existence of blue straggler stars (BSS), which appear younger, hotter, and more massive than their siblings, is at odds with a simple picture of stellar evolution, as such stars should have exhausted their nuclear fuel and evolved long ago to become cooling white dwarfs. As such, BSS could just be some quirks but in fact their understanding requires a deep knowledge of many different areas in astronomy, from stellar evolution through cluster dynamics, from chemical abundances to stellar populations. In November 2012, a workshop on this important topic took place at the ESO Chilean headquarters in Santiago. The many topics covered at this workshop were introduced by very comprehensive invited reviews, providing a unique and insightful view on the field. These reviews have now become chapters of the first ever book on BSS.