Speaker: Lee Anne Willson, Iowa State University

Host: Jacob Simon

Title: How it all ends, or where is the tip of the AGB?

Abstract: Stars like the Sun, and up to 3 or more times its mass, end as white dwarf stars with masses 0.5 to 0.8 times the mass of the Sun. How does that mass leave the star, and what determines the luminosity where that happens? That has been the question I’ve been pursuing for half a century, working with models and observations to understand the process of mass loss. Now we have an answer to where it happens, and it is an answer with surprises. Have we been looking at the problem from the wrong direction all these years?