stripped star

The term stripped star is sometimes used for a star that has lost substantial material through mass transfer to a binary companion. A companion may accrete virtually all of its hydrogen, or additionally, virtually all of its helium. Given what is known of the variety of binary stars, such stripped stars should exist, and the concept is sometimes proposed regarding stars showing some characteristics, i.e., of certain types of binary stars, variable stars, and peculiar stars. A star might be viewed with spectral features suggesting a lack of hydrogen and/or helium, and the concept is also considered as a possibility for an unseen body detected by the radial velocity method, transit method or astrometry; in such a case, other concepts are typically also considered, such as M dwarfs, brown dwarfs, extra-solar planets and compact objects. Such stripped stars are also hypothesized as supernova progenitors for some supernova types, leading to use of the term stripped supernova (and variants).