Results of selected stellar spectroscopy programs at the 6-m telescope of SAO RAS performed with the NES echelle spectrograph

TL;DR

This paper reviews two decades of high-resolution stellar spectroscopy using the NES echelle spectrograph at the 6-m SAO RAS telescope, focusing on evolved stars with complex atmospheres and circumstellar envelopes.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of observational results and insights into the atmospheric composition, evolution, and kinematic processes of diverse evolved stars.

Findings

Study of chemical peculiarities in stellar atmospheres

Analysis of kinematic instability in stellar atmospheres

Contribution to understanding stellar evolution and enrichment of interstellar medium

Abstract

Over the past two decades the echelle spectrograph NES of the 6-m telescope was used to perform high resolution spectroscopy of far evolved stars spanning a wide range of initial masses. The studies cover a diversity of stars with high mass-loss rates during the preceding and current stages of evolution. All these stars have extended atmospheres and structured circumstellar envelopes produced by strong stellar winds. We have studied luminous blue variables near the Eddington limit; hot supergiants with B[e] phenomenon in spectra, which are very likely intermediate-mass binary systems soon after the fast mass exchange stage; a group of yellow hypergiants, as well as an extensive sample of low-mass post-AGB supergiants. The diverse nature of the types of these stars whose common feature is the presence of a circumstellar envelope makes the spectroscopy of such objects a comprehensive task. Such studies consist of many etapes, which include not only determining the peculiarities of their atmospheric chemical composition and understanding the role of supergiants in the enrichment of the interstellar medium with freshly synthesized elements, but also the determination of the evolution status of the objects considered, as well as search for and analysis of spectroscopic manifestations of kinematic processes in their extended and unstable atmospheres and gas-dust envelopes. We spectroscopically monitored selected objects to study in detail the instability of the kinematic state of the atmospheres of the stars considered. This review reports briefly the most significant observational obtained within the framework of the programs in 1998--2021.