Related papers: Massive stars in colliding wind systems: the GLAST…
Gamma-ray bursts with long durations are widely thought to arise from the collapse of massive stars, where the wind environment is unavoidable. It is also believed that $\gamma$-ray bursts come from jets. Considering these two points in…
Recent reports claiming association of the massive star binary system $\gamma^2 $Velorum (WR 11) with a high-energy $\gamma$-ray source observed by \textit{Fermi}-LAT contrast the so-far exclusive role of $\eta$ Carinae as the hitherto only…
Several gamma-ray binaries show extended X-ray emission that may be associated to interactions of an outflow with the medium. Some of these systems are, or may be, high-mass binaries harboring young nonaccreting pulsars, in which the…
A large fraction of the detections to be made by the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) will initially be unidentified. We argue that traditional methodological approaches to identify individuals and/or populations of $\gamma$-ray…
Radio observations are an effective tool to discover particle acceleration regions in colliding-wind binaries, through detection of synchrotron radiation; these regions are natural laboratories for the study of relativistic particles.…
I discuss some of the important aspects of the phenomena of colliding winds in massive binary star systems with a particular focus on WR140.
High-mass binaries hosting young pulsars can be powerful gamma-ray emitters. The stellar wind of the massive star in the system is expected to be clumpy. Since the high-energy emission comes from the pulsar-star wind interaction, the…
Colliding-wind binaries (CWBs) constitute an emerging class of $\gamma$-ray sources powered by strong, dense winds in massive stellar systems. The most powerful of them are those binaries hosting a Wolf-Rayet (WR) star. Following the recent…
Blazars, the extreme family of AGN, can be strong gamma-ray emitters and constitute the largest fraction of identified point sources of EGRET. The next Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is a high energy (30MeV-300GeV) gamma-ray…
WR140 is the archetype long-period colliding wind binary (CWB) system, and is well known for dramatic variations in its synchrotron emission during its 7.9-yr, highly eccentric orbit. This emission is thought to arise from relativistic…
Abundance anomalies observed in globular cluster stars indicate pollution with material processed by hydrogen burning. Two main sources have been suggested: asymptotic giant branch stars and massive stars rotating near the break-up limit.…
High-mass microquasars are binary systems composed by a massive star and a compact object from which relativistic jets are launched. Regarding the companion star, observational evidence supports the idea that winds of hot stars are formed…
Using XMM-Newton, we undertook a dedicated project to search for X-ray bright wind-wind collisions in 18 WR+OB systems. We complemented these observations with Swift and Chandra datasets, allowing for the study of two additional systems. We…
Some studies have claimed a universal stellar upper-mass limit of 150 Msun. A factor that is often overlooked is that there might be a difference between the current and initial masses of the most massive stars, as a result of mass loss. We…
Massive Wolf-Rayet stars in a compact binary systems are characterised by very strong winds which collide creating a shock wave. If the wind nuclei accelerated at the shock can reach large enough energies, they suffer disintegration in…
Massive stars form in dense and massive molecular cores. The exact formation mechanism is unclear, but it is possible that some massive stars are formed by processes similar to those that produce the low-mass stars, with accretion/ejection…
We present highlights and an overview of 20 FUSE and HST/STIS observations of the bright symbiotic binary EG And. The main motivation behind this work is to obtain spatially-resolved information on an evolved giant star in order to…
Long Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are produced by ultra-relativistic jets launched from core collapse of massive stars. Most massive stars form in binaries and/or in star clusters, which means that there may be a significant external photon…
We conducted an observational campaign towards one of the most massive and luminous colliding wind binaries in the Galaxy, HD~93129A, close to its periastron passage in 2018. During this time the source was predicted to be in its maximum of…
Massive stars in binary systems (as WR140, WR147 or $\eta$ Carinae) have long been regarded as potential sources of high-energy $\gamma$-rays. The emission is thought to arise in the region where the stellar winds collide and produce…