Related papers: First bounds on the high-energy emission from isol…
Fine-structure mid-infrared emission lines with critical densities in the regime 10^4 to 10^6 cm^-3 can be employed to probe the outflow from Wolf-Rayet stars at radii of \sim 10^15 cm. Narrow-band mid-infrared imaging and spectroscopy of…
Several binary systems have been detected at High Energy (HE, E > 100 MeV) and/or Very High Energy (VHE, E > 100 GeV) gamma rays. Some of them are X-ray binaries in which accretion feeds relativistic radio jets and powers the non-thermal…
We summarize new X-ray detections of four nitrogen-type Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars obtained in a limited survey aimed at establishing the X-ray properties of WN stars across their full range of spectral subtypes. None of the detected stars is so…
Classical Wolf-Rayet stars are descendants of massive OB-type stars that have lost their hydrogen-rich envelopes, and are in the final stages of stellar evolution, possibly exploding as type Ib/c supernovae. It is understood that the…
The LIGO-Virgo analyses of signals from compact binary mergers observed so far have assumed isolated binary systems in a vacuum, neglecting the potential presence of astrophysical environments. We present here the first investigation of…
Massive stars produce strong stellar winds that consist of continuous outflows of material at speeds of thousands of km/s. These winds convey large amounts of kinetic power, especially in the case of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. When these winds…
We discuss in this Letter the energetics of large gamma-ray superflares observed from Soft-Gamma Repeater sources. The last recorded event has in fact ruled out some models for the energy release. For the first time actual information about…
Some of the very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray sources detected with the modern generation of Cherenkov telescopes have been identified with previously known X-ray binary systems. These detections demonstrate the richness of non-thermal…
The recently discovered soft gamma-ray emission from the anomalous X-ray pulsar 1E 1841-045 has a luminosity L_g ~ 10^{36} ergs/s. This luminosity exceeds the spindown power by three orders of magnitude and must be fed by an alternative…
Massive star evolutionary models generally predict the correct ratio of WC-type and WN-type Wolf-Rayet stars at low metallicities, but underestimate the ratio at higher (solar and above) metallicities. One possible explanation for this…
Near infrared spectroscopy and photometry of the Wolf-Rayet Star WR 143 (HD 195177) were obtained in the $JHK$ photometric bands. High resolution spectra observed in the J and H bands exhibit narrow 1.083-micron He I line and the H I Pa…
Binary systems that harbor a non-accreting pulsar are efficient non-thermal emitters, from radio to gamma rays. This broadband emission is thought to come from the region where the companion star and pulsar winds collide. A paradigmatic…
We address several issues regarding the interpretation of galactic \ggg-ray sources. We consider powerful pulsars in binaries producing X-ray and gamma-ray {\it unpulsed} emission from the shock interaction of relativistic pulsar winds with…
We report on interferometric observations with the CHARA Array of two classical Wolf-Rayet stars in suspected binary systems, namely WR 137 and WR 138. In both cases, we resolve the component stars to be separated by a few milliarcseconds.…
Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are helium-burning, evolved massive stars which have had most of their hydrogen-rich outer layers removed either through stellar winds and/or binary stripping. Here we report on LMC173-1, a WN3+O binary located in the…
The WN3/O3 Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars were discovered as part of our survey for WRs in the Magellanic Clouds. The WN3/O3s show the emission lines of a high-excitation WN star and the absorption lines of a hot O-type star, but our prior work has…
The massive evolved Wolf-Rayet stars sometimes occur in colliding-wind binary systems in which dust plumes are formed as a result of the collision of stellar winds. These structures are known to encode the parameters of the binary orbit and…
X-ray and gamma-ray binaries are systems consisting of a compact object and normally a non-degenerate companion star. Most of these sources have been shown to emit radiation in a broad frequency range, from radio up to X-rays and sometimes…
BAT99-129 is a rare, short-period eclipsing Wolf-Rayet binary in the Large Magellanic Cloud. We present here medium-resolution NTT/EMMI spectra that allow us to disentangle the spectra of the two components and find the orbital parameters…
The observed late-type WC Wolf-Rayet stars (WC7-9) with low luminosity below $\rm \log L/L_{\odot} < 5.4$ in the HR diagram cannot be reproduced satisfactorily by the evolutionary track of single stars. The mass transfer due to Roche lobe…