Related papers: Revealing evolved massive stars with Spitzer
We present spectra of 32 previously unpublished confirmed and candidate Wolf-Rayet ([WR]) and weak emission-line (WELS) central stars of planetary nebulae (CSPNe). Eighteen stars have been discovered in the Macquarie/AAO/Strasbourg H-Alpha…
Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs) are a class of massive blue supergiants exhibiting irregular and eruptive instability, sometimes accompanied by extreme mass loss. While they have often been considered to be a brief but very important…
We suggest that the mass lost during the evolution of very massive stars may be dominated by optically thick, continuum-driven outbursts or explosions, instead of by steady line-driven winds. In order for a massive star to become a WR star,…
In the standard view of massive star evolution, luminous blue variables (LBVs) are transitional objects between the most massive O-type stars and Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. With short lifetimes, these stars should all be found near one another.…
Massive stars evolve across the HR diagram, losing mass along the way and forming a variety of ring nebulae. During the main sequence stage, the fast stellar wind sweeps up the ambient interstellar medium to form an interstellar bubble.…
(Abridged) We have performed a comprehensive multiwavelength analysis of a sample of 20 starburst galaxies that show the presence of a substantial population of massive stars. The main aims are the study of the massive star formation and…
Stars more massive than about 8 Msun end their lives as a Supernova (SN), an event of fundamental importance Universe-wide. Theoretically, these stars have been expected to be either at the red supergiant, blue supergiant, or Wolf-Rayet…
A very small fraction of (runaway) massive stars have masses exceeding $60$-$70\, \rm M_{\odot}$ and are predicted to evolve as Luminous-Blue-Variable and Wolf-Rayet stars before ending their lives as core-collapse supernovae. Our 2D…
The central region of the Milky Way provides a unique laboratory for a systematic, spatially-resolved population study of evolved massive stars of various types in a relatively high metallicity environment. We have conducted a…
We report the results of an intense, spectroscopic survey of all 41 late-type, nitrogen-rich Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) observable with ground-based telescopes. This survey concludes the decade-long effort of…
Luminous blue variables (LBVs) are rare objects of very high luminosity and mass loss rates, low wind velocities, exhibiting strong irregular photometric and spectral variability. They are generally believed to be a relatively short…
Most stars will experience episodes of substantial mass loss at some point in their lives. For very massive stars, mass loss dominates their evolution, although the mass loss rates are not known exactly, particularly once the star has left…
We present a morphological study of nebulae around Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars using archival narrow-band optical and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) infrared images. The comparison among WISE images in different bands and optical…
We present medium- and broad-band Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry of a sample of 35 central stars (CSs) of Planetary Nebulae (PNs) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The observations were made with the WFPC2 and STIS instruments…
Over the past decade, the number of planetary nebula central stars (CSPN) known to exhibit the Wolf-Rayet (WR) phenomenon has grown substantially. Many of these discoveries have resulted from the Macquarie/AAO/Strasbourg Ha (MASH) PN…
Massive Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars dominate the radiative and mechanical energy budget of galaxies and probe a critical phase in the evolution of massive stars prior to core-collapse. It is not known whether core He-burning WR stars (classical…
Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars comprise a class of stars whose spectra are dominated by strong, broad emission lines that are associated with copious mass loss. In the massive-star regime, roughly 90% of the known WR stars are thought to have…
Recent large scale Galactic Plane H$\alpha$ surveys allow a re-examination of the environs of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars for the presence of a circumstellar nebula. Using the morphologies of WR nebulae known to be composed of stellar ejecta as a…
The LMC is ideal for studying the co-evolution of planetary nebulae (PNe) and their central stars, in that the debilitating uncertainties of the Galactic PN distance scale and selection biases from attenuation by interstellar dust do not…
The ASSESS project aims to determine the role of episodic mass-loss in the evolution of massive stars. As a first step, we construct a catalog of spectroscopically identified dusty, evolved massive stars in ten southern galaxies for which…