Related papers: Two massive stars possibly ejected from NGC 3603 v…
OB runaway stars are massive stars moving through interstellar space at high velocities (up to 200 km/s), produced by dynamical ejections in young massive clusters or supernova explosions in massive binaries. They can travel several hundred…
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…
We report the detection of five high-velocity stars in the core of the globular cluster NGC 2808. The stars lie on the the red giant branch and show total velocities between 40 and 45 km/s. For a core velocity dispersion sigma_c = 13.4…
Recent surveys of the Magellanic Clouds have revealed a subtype of Wolf-Rayet (WR) star with peculiar properties. WN3/O3 spectra exhibit both WR-like emission and O3 V-like absorption - but at lower luminosity than O3 V or WN stars. We…
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…
Understanding how distinct, near-spherical gas-free clusters of very young, massive stars shape out of vast, complex clouds of molecular hydrogen is one of the biggest challenges in astrophysics. A popular thought dictates that a single gas…
The unusual variable star V838 Monocerotis underwent an eruption in 2002. It continues to illuminate a spectacular series of light echoes, as the outburst light is scattered from circumstellar dust. V838 Mon has an unresolved B3 V companion…
Numerical-relativity simulations for the merger of binary neutron stars are performed for a variety of equations of state (EOSs) and for a plausible range of the neutron-star mass, focusing primarily on the properties of the material…
Very young star clusters in the Milky Way exhibit a well-defined relation between their maximum stellar mass, m_max, and their mass in stars, M_ecl. A recent study shows that the young intermediate-mass star cluster VVV CL041 possibly hosts…
We report the discovery by the Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign of two low-mass companions to the young A0V star HD 1160 at projected separations of 81 +/- 5 AU (HD 1160 B) and 533 +/- 25 AU (HD 1160 C). VLT images of the system taken…
We present a detailed analysis of the star cluster population in the starburst galaxy NGC 5253. Our work is based on HST optical and VLT Ks images. We detect more than 300 clusters, and for all of them we derive the photometry in the V, I…
The formation of very young massive clusters or "starburst" clusters is currently one of the most widely debated topic in astronomy. The classical notion dictates that a star cluster is formed in-situ in a dense molecular gas clump followed…
A substellar-mass object in orbit at about 300 astronomical units (AU) from the young low-mass star G196-3 was detected by direct imaging. Optical and infrared photometry and low- and intermediate-resolution spectroscopy of the faint…
It is well known that massive O-stars are frequently (if not always) found in binary or higher-order multiple systems, but this fact has been less robustly investigated for the lower mass range of the massive stars, represented by the…
We report the detection of CO(2-1) and 3.1 mm and 1.3 mm continuum emission towards the extremely young starburst in NGC 5253, with data taken from the Owens Valley Millimeter Array. Faint CO emission originates in five molecular clouds…
O-type stars are known to significantly contribute to both the dynamics and evolution of galaxies. Massive and luminous, they probably control and regulate the galaxies star formation rates. For this work I performed a redetermination of…
We present results of deep 153 ks Chandra observations of the hot, 11 keV, galaxy cluster associated with the radio galaxy 3C 438. By mapping the morphology of the hot gas and analyzing its surface brightness and temperature distributions,…
NGC 6357, a star-forming complex at $\sim 1.7$ kpc from the Sun, contains giant molecular clouds and three prominent star clusters alongside with HII regions, very massive stars and thousands of young stellar objects in different…
Aims: We aim at deriving the excitation conditions of the interstellar gas as well as the local FUV intensities in the molecular cloud surrounding NGC 3603 to get a coherent picture of how the gas is energized by the central stars. Methods:…
We present a study of the star cluster associated with the massive Galactic HII region NGC3603 based on near-IR broad-- and narrowband observations taken with ISAAC/VLT under excellent seeing conditions (<0.4''). We discuss color-color…