Related papers: A Blast Wave from the 1843 Eruption of Eta Carinae
Context. Colliding-wind binaries are massive stellar systems featuring strong, interacting winds. These binaries may be actual particle accelerators, making them variable gamma-ray sources due to changes in the wind collision region along…
Eta Carinae underwent the Great Eruption in the 1840s and a Lesser Eruption in the 1890s. Its apparent spectrum, modified by intervening ejecta, the Homunculus and Little Homunculus, continues to evolve but contains information pertaining…
Some reports of supernova (SN) discoveries turn out not to be true core-collapse explosions. One such case was SN 2009ip, which was recognized to be a luminous blue variable (LBV) eruption. This source had a massive hot progenitor star…
Luminous blue variables (LBVs) are characterized by semi-periodic episodes of enhanced mass-loss, or outburst. The cause of these outbursts has thus far been a mystery. One explanation is that they are initiated by kappa-effect pulsations…
We argue that the asymmetric morphology of the blue and red shifted components of the outflow at hundreds of AU from the massive binary system Eta Carinae can be understood from the collision of the primary stellar wind with the slowly…
We present progenitor-star detections, light curves, and optical spectra of SN2009ip and the 2009 optical transient in UGC2773 (U2773-OT), which were not genuine SNe. Precursor variability in the decade before outburst indicates that both…
We analyze velocity profiles of the X-ray spectral lines emitted by the Eta Carinae stellar binary at four epochs, just before the X-ray minimum (associated with periastron) and more than two years before the minimum (~apastron). The…
The Luminous Blue Variable stars exhibit behavior ranging from light curve `microvariations' on timescales of tens of days, to `outbursts' accompanied by mass loss of up to 10e-03 solar masses per year, occurring decades apart, to `giant…
Eta Carinae's inner ejecta are dominated observationally by the bright Weigelt blobs and their famously rich spectra of nebular emission and absorption lines. They are dense (n_e ~ 10^7 to 10^8 cm^-3), warm (T_e ~ 6000 to 7000 K) and slow…
The historical light curve of the 19th century "Great Eruption" of etaCar provides a striking record of violent instabilies encountered by the most massive stars. We report and analyze newly uncovered historical estimates of the visual…
Stellar winds emitted by rotating massive stars may show two main components: firstly bipolar lobes with low density and fast wind, produced by the higher T$_{\mathrm{eff}}$ and gravity at the poles (`g$_{\mathrm{eff}}$-effect'); secondly,…
We predict quantitative mass-loss rates and terminal wind velocities for early-type supergiants and luminous blue variables (LBVs) using a dynamical version of the Monte Carlo radiative transfer method. First, the observed drop in terminal…
X-ray emission from the supermassive star Eta Carinae (\ec) originates from hot shocked gas produced by current stellar mass loss as well as ejecta from prior eruptive events. Absorption of this emission by cool material allows the…
Recent work suggests that many luminous blue variables (LBVs) and B[e] supergiants (sgB[e]) are isolated, implying that they may be products of massive binaries, kicked by partner supernovae (SNe). However, the evidence is somewhat complex…
We present narrowband images of eta Carinae in the light of [O III] 5007 obtained with HST/WFPC2, as well as a ground-based image in the same emission line with a larger field of view. These images show a thin veil of [O III] emission…
During $\eta$ Car's spectroscopic event in mid-2003, the stellar wind's bright H$\alpha$ and H$\beta$ emission lines temporarily had a distinctive shape unlike that reported on any previous occasion, and particularly unlike the 1997--98…
The late-stage evolution of very massive stars such as $\eta$ Carinae may be dominated by episodic mass ejections which may later lead to Type II superluminous supernova (SLSN-II; e.g., SN 2006gy). However, as long as $\eta$ Car is one of a…
We report near-IR spectroscopic observations of the Eta Carinae massive binary system during 2008-2009 using VLT/CRIRES. We detect a strong, broad absorption wing in He I 10833 extending up to -1900 km/s across the 2009.0 spectroscopic…
The most massive stars, with initial masses above ~50M_sun, encounter a phase of extreme mass loss - sometimes accompanied by so-called giant eruptions - in which the stars' evolution is reversed from a redward to a blueward motion in the…
The luminous unstable star (star system) eta Carinae is surrounded by an optically bright bipolar nebula, the Homunculus and a fainter but much larger nebula, the so-called outer ejecta. As images from the EINSTEIN and ROSAT satellites have…