Observations of some so-called ‘water fountain’ stars show that they appear to have lost a large fraction of their initial mass in a very short time (hundreds of years). This leads Khouri et al. to suggest that these sources have undergone the poorly understood process of common-envelope evolution, where the envelope of one star engulfs that of its companion.
- Theo Khouri
- Wouter H. T. Vlemmings
- Raghvendra Sahai
