Semiregular variable stars

TL;DR

This paper reviews the observational and theoretical understanding of semiregular variable stars, their evolutionary stages, and their connection to other variable star types, highlighting their significance in stellar evolution.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of semiregular variables, detailing their evolutionary paths and classifications, and discusses their potential link to long-period variables and planetary nebulae.

Findings

Semiregular variables evolve through various spectral classes and luminosity stages.

They are connected to long-period variables like Mira Ceti.

RV Tau stars may be transitional objects toward planetary nebulae.

Abstract

The studies of semiregular variables of stars by different authors are considered, and the main theoretical and observational problems associated with these stars are reviewed. Their evolutionary status and possible connection with long-period variables such as Mira Ceti are discussed. Individual objects belonging to different types of semiregular variables are described in detail. After leaving the main sequence, the stars pass through the region of instability of Cepheids, turning into radially pulsating variables of type \delta Cephei. These stars can be associated with semiregular variables giants and supergiants of spectral classes F-K, which are usually denoted by the symbol SRd. In the process of further evolution of the variables of high luminosity fall in the region of red supergiants, becoming the type variables SRc (or Lc), and the variables lower luminosity turn into a semiregular variables SRab (or wrong Lb) of late spectral classes. Variables of the RV Tau type are a class of low-mass (with masses of the order of one solar) pulsating F-K-supergiants, which may be at the short-term evolutionary stage of transition from the red giant to the protoplanetary nebula, which explains the small number of stars of this type of variability. Shklovsky (1956) was the first to point to stars of this type as the progenitors of planetary nebulae.