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Monthly online seminar of the Working Group on Active B Stars (WGABS)
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Date: 21/10/2025
Location: Online (Zoom)
Description: The IAU Working Group on Active B Stars (WGABS) organizes a monthly online seminar on topics relating to active B stars including, e.g., accretion disks, binarity, and magnetism. All interested parties are welcome to join via Zoom. This month's seminar will be held on October 21st at 16:00 CEST, and will be given by Dr. Abigail Frost from the European Southern Observatory, Chile. Title: The multiplicity of B stars and its effects Abstract: Massive stars have huge influence, with their felt from local to galactic scales. While they are fainter, less massive than the most massive O-type stars, B-type stars create their own set of unique phenomena and play important roles within the Universe. Above ¡25-40 solar masses, depending on the metallicity, most massive stars directly collapse into BHs. Therefore, most SNe come from B-type stars, alongside neutron stars (NS), pulsars, and the gravitational waves from long-inspiralling NS-NS mergers (e.g. GW170817; Abbott et al. 2017). Determining the B star multiplicity fraction is therefore a keystone for understanding a wide range of astrophysical phenomena. In this talk, I will discuss the multiplicity of B stars, highlight the results from a recent interferometric survey of B stars and discuss how this technique can also help us disentangle the history of interacting B star binary systems. |
