Boundary Conditions with Mass-Loss: General Considerations

I begin by stating very explicitly and unambiguously that I completely disagree with any idea that a stellar atmosphere can be in any sense a boundary of the star, or that the atmosphere sets boundary conditions on stellar structure. Such an idea is what underlies all the single-layer, LTE atmospheric models, which misdirected atmospheric studies for so many years by introducing a false separation between “normal” and “extended” atmospheric phenomena. On the contrary, I assert that a more correct physical picture for the atmosphere than as a boundary comes from the characterization of star and atmosphere as: (1) The STAR is: a concentration of matter and energy, C (M, E), in its parental environment, the interstellar medium (ISM); with boundary conditions on stellar structure being set by the way one models (a) storage modes for matter and energy in the star and ISM, and (b) energy generation in the star.