Related papers: Two O2 If*/WN6 stars possibly ejected from the mas…
The morphology and stellar content of the Cygnus OB2 association has been determined using 2MASS infrared observations in the J, H, and K bands. The analysis reveals a spherically symmetric association of 2 deg in diameter with a half light…
We present HST/NICMOS observations (1.1-2.2micron) and 1.9-4.1micron spectroscopy of the central region of the dwarf galaxy NGC5253. The HST/NICMOS observations reveal the presence of a nuclear double star cluster separated by 0.3-0.4arcsec…
The evolutionary origin of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars at Solar metallicity is unclear. Single-star evolution from massive O stars, possibly via a Luminous Blue Variable phase, is challenged by binary period distributions of different WR…
Cygnus OB2 provides a unique insight into the high-mass stellar content in one of the largest groups of young massive stars in our Galaxy. Although several studies of its massive population have been carried out over the last decades, an…
We present new observations of O II recombination lines in ten bright planetary nebulae, along with spatially-resolved measurements of O II and [O III] in the Ring nebula NGC 6720, to study the discrepancy between abundances derived from O…
Young massive (M >10^4 Msun) stellar clusters are a good laboratory to study the evolution of massive stars. Only a dozen of such clusters are known in the Galaxy. Here we report about a new young massive stellar cluster in the Milky Way.…
We report the first-ever discovery of a Wolf-Rayet (WR) star in the Large Magellanic Cloud via detection of a circular shell with the Spitzer Space Telescope. Follow-up observations with Gemini-South resolved the central star of the shell…
We present the discovery of the totally eclipsing long-period (P = 771.8 d) binary system WOCS 23009 in the old open cluster NGC 6819 that contains both an evolved star near central hydrogen exhaustion and a low-mass (0.45 Msun) star. This…
The Gaia data release 2 (DR2) contains $>$6000 objects with parallaxes $(Plx+3\times{e\_Plx})>50$mas placing them within 20pc from the Sun. Since the expected numbers extrapolating the well-known 10pc census are much lower, nearby Gaia…
The evolution leading to the formation of a neutron star in the very young Westerlund 1 star cluster is investigated. The turnoff mass has been estimated to be 35 Msun, indicating a cluster age ~ 3-5 Myr. The brightest X-ray source in the…
The open cluster Berkeley 90 is the home to one of the most massive binary systems in the Galaxy, LS III +46$^{\circ}$11, formed by two identical, very massive stars (O3.5 If* + O3.5 If*), and a second early-O system (LS III +46$^{\circ}$12…
Massive stars can be efficiently ejected from their birth clusters through encounters with other massive stars. We study how the dynamical ejection fraction of O star systems varies with the masses of very young star clusters, Mecl, by…
% context About 2500 planetary nebulae are known in our Galaxy but only 224 have central stars with reported spectral types in the Strasbourg-ESO Catalogue of Galactic Planetary Nebulae (Acker et al. 1992; Acker et al. 1996) % aims We have…
Outside of the known star clusters in the Galactic Center, a large number of evolved massive stars have been detected; but their origins remain uncertain. We present a spectroscopic study of eight such stars, based on new Gemini GNIRS and…
We exploit the precise parallaxes and proper motions contained in Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) to establish whether the proposed wide-separation companions to five nearby, young stars are in fact equidistant and comoving with these stars. For…
Time-domain studies of pre-main sequence stars have long been used to investigate star properties during their early evolutionary phases and to trace the evolution of circumstellar environments. Historically these studies have been confined…
Wolf-Rayet stars (WR) have been detected in the NW region of the metal-poor starburst galaxy IZw 18. The integrated luminosity and FWHM of the bumps at 4650 A and 5808 A are consistent with the presence of a few individual stars of WC4 or…
Sensitive and high angular resolution ($\sim$ $0\rlap.{"}7$) (sub)millimeter line and continuum observations of the massive star forming region W3(OH) made with the Submillimeter Array are presented. We report the first detection of two…
CONTEXT. Dynamical interactions in young stellar clusters can eject massive stars early in their lives and significantly alter their mass functions. If all of the most massive stars are lost, we are left with an orphan cluster. AIMS. We…
From Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations we previously identified a population of 123 young stellar systems with nonthermal radio emission toward the core of the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC). We find optical sources in the Gaia DR2…