https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-023-00926-8
Review
The carbon star mystery: 40 years later
Theory and observations
1
INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico d’Abruzzo, Via Maggini snc, 64100, Teramo, Italy
2
Dpto. Física Teórica y del Cosmos, Universidad de Granada, 18071, Granada, Spain
Received:
8
December
2022
Accepted:
17
January
2023
Published online:
6
February
2023
In 1981 Icko Iben Jr published a paper entitled “The carbon star mystery: why do the low mass ones become such, and where have all the high mass ones gone?”, where he discussed the discrepancy between the theoretical expectation and its observational counterpart about the luminosity function of AGB carbon stars. After more than 40 years, our understanding of this longstanding problem is greatly improved, also thanks to more refined stellar models and a growing amount of observational constraints. In this paper we review the state of the art of these studies and we briefly illustrate the future perspectives.
© The Author(s) 2023
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