Related papers: IRC-10414: a bow-shock-producing red supergiant st…
We present HST spectroscopy and imaging, along with new ground-based spectroscopy and ROSAT HRI imaging, of the He II emitting nebula N44C and its ionizing star. A GHRS spectrogram of the ionizing star yields a spectral type of about O7 for…
The Red Rectangle is a nebula surrounding the post-AGB star HD 44179. It is the prototype of a particular class of nebulae associated with post-AGB binaries characterised by the presence of stable circumbinary disks in (quasi-)Keplerian…
We report the discovery of an H-alpha-emitting bow-shock nebula powered by the nearby millisecond pulsar J2124-3358. The bow shock is very broad, and is highly asymmetric about the pulsar's velocity vector. This shape is not consistent with…
We present new spectroscopic observations of the He I $\lambda$10830 line in R Coronae Borealis (RCB) stars which provide the first strong evidence that most, if not all, RCB stars have winds. It has long been suggested that when dust forms…
Massive stars drive strong winds that impact the surrounding interstellar medium, producing parsec-scale bubbles for isolated stars and superbubbles around young clusters. These bubbles can be observed across the electromagnetic spectrum,…
The results of a 7-epoch interferometric imaging study, at wavelengths in the near-infrared K-band, of the carbon star IRC +10216 are presented. The use of non- and partially-redundant aperture masking techniques on the 10-m Keck-I…
We report the discovery of a bow shock around the high-mass X-ray binary (HMXB) 4U 1907+09 using the Spitzer Space Telescope 24 $\mu$m data (after Vela X-1 the second example of bow shocks associated with HMXBs). The detection of the bow…
Runaway stars form bow shocks by sweeping up interstellar matter in their direction of motion. Theoretical models predict a spectrally wide non-thermal component reaching up to gamma-ray energies at a flux level detectable with current…
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…
Mid-infrared images from the Spitzer Space Telescope Galactic Legacy Infrared MidPlane Survey Extraordinaire program reveal that the infrared source IRAS 03063+5735 is a bowshock nebula produced by an early B star, 2MASS 03101044+5747035.…
IC 3418 is a dwarf irregular galaxy falling into the Virgo cluster, and a 17 kpc long trail is seen behind the galaxy, which is considered to have formed due to ram pressure stripping. The trail contains compact knots and diffuse blobs of…
Stellar bow shocks result from relative motions between stars and their environment. The interaction of the stellar wind and radiation with gas and dust in the interstellar medium produces curved arcs of emission at optical, infrared, and…
We find that a non-axisymmetric bow shock model, with an appropriate choice of parameters, could fit the line splitting velocity field of the cone-like H$\alpha$ nebula in NGC 4945 better than a canonical cone model. Meanwhile, the bow…
Our knowledge of the chemical properties of the circumstellar ejecta of the most massive evolved stars is particularly poor. We aim to study the chemical characteristics of the prototypical yellow hypergiant star, IRC +10420. For this…
The complex X-ray system IGR J11014-6103 (a.k.a. the Lighthouse nebula) is composed of a bow-shock pulsar wind nebula (PWN) as well as large-scale jet-like features, all launched by IGR J11014-6103 which is moving supersonically in the…
The Wolf-Rayet (WR) nebula NGC3199 has been suggested to be a bow shock around its central star WR18, presumably a runaway star, because optical images of the nebula show a dominating arc of emission south-west of the star. We present the…
The fate of massive stars during the latest stages of their evolution is highly dependent on their mass-loss rate and geometry. These processes have a significant influence on stars with masses between 25 and 40 Msun, i.e., type II SN…
We report Spitzer observations of five newly identified bow shocks in the massive star-forming region RCW 38. Four are visible at IRAC wavelengths, the fifth is visible only at 24 microns. Chandra X-ray emission indicates that winds from…
The bow shocks of runaway stars with strong stellar winds of over 2000 km s$^{-1}$ can serve as particle acceleration sites. The conversion from stellar wind luminosity into particle acceleration power has an efficiency of the same order of…
Pulsars moving through ISM produce bow shocks detected in hydrogen H$\alpha$ line emission. The morphology of the bow shock nebulae allows one to probe the properties of ISM on scales $\sim 0.01$ pc and smaller. We performed 2D RMHD…