Related papers: Westerlund 1: bound or unbound?

Current mass-loss rate estimates imply that main sequence winds are not sufficient to strip away the H-rich envelope to yield Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. The rich transitional population of Westerlund 1 (Wd 1) provides an ideal laboratory to…

The cluster Westerlund~1 (Wd1) is host to a large variety of post main-sequence (MS) massive stars. The simultaneous presence of these stars can only be explained by stellar models if the cluster has a finely-tuned age of 4-5Myr, with…

Westerlund 2 (Wd2) is the central ionizing star cluster of the \ion{H}{2} region RCW~49 and the second most massive young star cluster (${\rm M} = (3.6 \pm 0.3)\times 10^4\,{\rm M}_\odot$) in the Milky Way. Its young age ($\sim2\,$Myr) and…

The formation, properties, and evolution of massive stars remain subject to considerable uncertainty; impacting on fields as diverse as galactic feedback and the nature of the progenitors of both electromagnetic and gravitational wave…

We report the discovery of an X-ray pulsar in the young, massive Galactic star cluster Westerlund 1. We detected a coherent signal from the brightest X-ray source in the cluster, CXO J164710.2-455216, during two Chandra observations on 2005…

Young massive stellar clusters are extreme environments and potentially provide the means for efficient particle acceleration. Indeed, they are increasingly considered as being responsible for a significant fraction of cosmic rays (CRs)…

We have obtained K-band Multi-Object Spectrograph (KMOS) near-IR spectroscopy for 14 red supergiant stars (RSGs) in the young massive star cluster NGC 2100 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Stellar parameters including metallicity are…

Clear identifications of Galactic young stellar clusters farther than a few kpc from the Sun are rare, despite the large number of candidate clusters. We aim to improve the selection of candidate clusters rich in massive stars with a…

The goal of this study is to determine a distance to Westerlund 1 independent of the characteristics of the stellar population and to study its neutral environment, using observations of atomic hydrogen. The HI observations are taken from…

Despite the first detection of X-rays from massive stars occurring four decades ago, the physical dependence of the emission mechanism(s) on the underlying stellar and binary properties of the emitters remains uncertain. The young massive…

Westerlund 1 is one of the most massive young clusters known in the Local Group, with an age of 3-5 Myr. It contains an assortment of rare evolved massive stars, such as blue, yellow and red supergiants, Wolf-Rayet stars, a luminous blue…

Westerlund 1 is a young, massive Galactic starburst cluster that contains a rich coeval population of Wolf-Rayet stars, hot- and cool-phase transitional supergiants, and a magnetar. We use spectroscopic and photometric observations of the…

We report new 5.5 GHz radio observations of the massive star cluster Westerlund 1, taken by the Australia Telescope Compact Array, detecting nine of the ten yellow hypergiants (YHGs) and red supergiants (RSGs) within the cluster. Eight of…

We present the diffuse X-ray emission identified in Chandra observations of the young, massive Galactic star cluster Westerlund 1. After removing point-like X-ray sources down to a completeness limit of 2e31 erg/s, we identify 3e34 erg/s…

We present the serendipitous discovery of a young stellar cluster in the Galactic disk at l=12deg. Using Keck/NIRSPEC, we obtained high- and low-resolution spectroscopy of several stars in the cluster, and we identified one red supergiant…

Massive stars play an important role in both cluster and galactic evolution and the rate at which they lose mass is a key driver of both their own evolution and their interaction with the environment up to and including their SNe…

We report the discovery of a population of Wolf-Rayet stars in the young Galactic open cluster Westerlund 1. In an incomplete shallow spectroscopic survey, we find six nitrogen-rich (WN) and five carbon-rich (WC) WR stars. We also confirm…

We report the discovery of a hitherto undetected population of Wolf-Rayet stars in the young galactic open cluster Westerlund 1. Optical spectroscopy of the cluster identified 11 such objects; provisional classification suggests that 6 are…

New NTT/SOFI imaging and spectroscopy of the Wolf-Rayet population in Westerlund 1 are presented. Narrow-band near-IR imaging together with follow up spectroscopy reveals four new WR stars, of which three were independently identified…

Massive stars exhibit spectroscopic and photometric variability over a wide range of timescales. However the physical mechanisms driving this behaviour remain poorly understood. Westerlund 1 presents an ideal laboratory for studying these…