An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

A rare class of → horizontal branch (HB)
stars that so far have been found in only very few Galactic → globular clusters.

These stars are such called because they form a blue hook at the hot end of the HB in → far ultraviolet (FUV) → color-magnitude diagrams. The physical mechanism that produces blue hook populations is still uncertain. At least two scenarios have been proposed.

In the first scenario these stars are explained as a consequence of extreme → mass loss during the → red giant branch phase and late helium flashing while descending the → white dwarf cooling track. Due to the thin residual hydrogen envelope, helium is mixed into the envelope and hydrogen is mixed into the core during the late → helium flash. As a result, the stars are hotter and UV-fainter than canonical → extreme horizontal branch stars (EHB).

By contrast, in the He self-enrichment scenario the EHB and blue hook stars are produced via the normal evolution of He-enriched sub-populations in globular clusters.

These sub-populations might have formed from the ejecta of intermediate-mass → asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars of the first generation of stars. For the same age and → metallicity, He-enriched HB stars have smaller masses than normal HB stars, resulting in bluer → zero age horizontal branch star (ZAHB) locations. They are also brighter in the FUV, but this effect is reversed for very hot He-enriched HB stars with → effective temperatures larger than 19000 K.
See Dieball A., et al., 2013, arXiv:0901.1309v1, and for blue hook stars in ω Cen cluster, M. Tailo et al., 2015, Nature 523, 318.

See also: → blue; → hook; → star.