Mass loss and evolution of massive stars

Abstract

In the past few years both growing observational evidence and theoretical understanding have shown that mass loss by stellar wind is a common occurrence in the evolutionary history of many types of star. Recent reviews on the subject may be found in Conti (1978), Cassinelli (1979), Conti and Mc Cray (1980), Hutchings (1980a), de Loore (1979, 1980) and Sreenivasan (1979).Therefore, in this paper we will concentrate only on those observational and theoretical aspects of the problem that demand further investigation.