exotic stellar atmospheres

I'm under the impression that all stars have stellar atmospheres,
although in the case of dense objects like neutron stars the thickness
of the atmosphere might be very small. What I would like to know is
what the composition of the stellar atmosphere is in the case of various
kinds of collapsed stars, such as neutron stars, kaon stars and black holes.
Naturally, I don't expect anyone really to know in some of these cases where
there is no experimental evidence, but in those cases I'd like to know what
theory predicts for the composition of the stellar atmosphere.

If you know of literature on this topic, please let me know.

Ignorantly,
Allan Adler


************************************************** **************************
* *
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT Artificial *
* Intelligence Lab. My actions and comments do not reflect *
* in any way on MIT. Moreover, I am nowhere near the Boston *
* metropolitan area. *
* *
************************************************** **************************

"AA" == Allan Adler writes:

AA I'm under the impression that all stars have stellar atmospheres,
AA although in the case of dense objects like neutron stars the
AA thickness of the atmosphere might be very small. What I would like
AA to know is what the composition of the stellar atmosphere is in
AA the case of various kinds of collapsed stars, such as neutron
AA stars, kaon stars and black holes.

Of course, black holes don't have a surface so they cannot have an
"atmosphere" as one usually thinks of it. As for neutron stars, there
is an extensive literature. For instance, typing in "neutron star
atmosphere" at the ADS finds over 350 hits.

Indeed, it looks like there are claims of direct detection of a
neutron star atmosphere in 1E 1207.4-5209 via X-ray absorption
features (Sanwal et al. 2002ApJ...574L..61S, URL:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/np...pJ...574L..61S
).

--
Lt. Lazio, HTML police | e-mail:
No means no, stop rape. | http://patriot.net/%7Ejlazio/
sci.astro FAQ at http://sciastro.astronomy.net/sci.astro.html