Related papers: Luminous Blue Variables are Antisocial: Their Isol…
I discuss outstanding questions about the formation of the ring nebula around SN1987A and some implications of similar ring nebulae around Galactic B supergiants. There are notable obstacles for the formation of SN1987A's bipolar nebula…
Massive stars are usually found in binaries, and binaries with periods less than 10 days may have a preference for near equal component masses. In this paper we investigate the evolution of these binaries all the way to contact and the…
(abridged) We present VLT/X-shooter spectroscopic observations in the wavelength range 3000-23000A of the extremely metal-deficient blue compact dwarf (BCD) galaxy PHL 293B containing a luminous blue variable (LBV) star. We determine…
Stellar models which incorporate simple diffusion or shear induced mixing are used to describe canonical extra mixing in low mass red giants of low and solar metallicity. These models are able to simultaneously explain the observed Li and…
Massive stars often evolve in binary systems, in which binary interactions significantly affect their evolution. Massive stars in the Galaxy serve as valuable testbeds for this due to their proximity. We computed the evolution of more than…
Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs) oftentimes show double-troughed absorption in their strong Halpha lines, which are as yet not understood. Intriguingly, the feature has also been seen in the interacting supernova SN 2005gj, which was for this…
We systematically investigate the effects of high supernova kick velocities on the orbital parameters of post-supernova neutron-star binaries. Using Monte- Carlo simulations, we determine the post-supernova distributions of orbital…
A substantial fraction of stars can be found in wide binaries with projected separations between $\sim10^2$ and $10^5\,\rm AU$. In the standard lore of binary physics, these would evolve as effectively single stars that remotely orbit one…
We have used Monte Carlo simulation techniques and published radial velocity surveys to constrain the frequency of very low-mass star (VLMS) and brown dwarf (BD) binary systems and their separation (a) distribution. Gaussian models for the…
Strange quark stars (SSs) may originate from accreting neutron stars (NSs) in low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). Assuming that conversion of NS matter to SSs occurs when the core density of accreting NS reaches to the density of quark…
Mergers of neutron stars (NSs) and black holes (BHs) are nowadays observed routinely thanks to gravitational-wave (GW) astronomy. In the isolated binary-evolution channel, a common-envelope (CE) phase of a red supergiant (RSG) and a compact…
The hot massive luminous blue variables (LBVs) represent an important evolutionary phase of massive stars. Here, we report the discovery of a new LBV -- LAMOST J0037+4016 in the distant outskirt of the Andromeda galaxy. It is located in the…
Several decades of observations of the most massive and most luminous stars have revealed a complex upper HR Diagram, shaped by mass loss, and inhabited by a variety of evolved stars exhibiting the consequences of their mass loss histories.…
Under the right conditions brown dwarfs that gain enough mass late in their lives to cross the hydrogen burning limit will not turn into low-mass stars, but rather remain essentially brown dwarf-like. While these objects, called either…
Given the uncertain evolutionary status of blue supergiant stars, their multiplicity properties hold vital clues to better understand their origin and evolution. As part of The Binarity at LOw Metallicity (BLOeM) campaign in the Small…
The contact phase represents a crossroad in the evolution of massive binary stars. Depending on the internal physics, the predicted end products can vary greatly including various exotic objects such as Be stars, magnetic massive stars,…
From a recent re-analysis of the available data, Be and B Galactic evolution appears to show evidence for a two-slope behaviour with respect to O. The inferred Be/O abundance ratio in halo stars is constant at very low metallicity (primary…
High-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) represent an important phase in the evolution of massive binary systems. HMXBs provide unique diagnostics to test massive-star evolution, to probe the physics of radiation-driven winds, to study the process…
Most types of massive stars display X-ray emission that is affected by the properties of their stellar winds. Single non-magnetic OB stars have an X-ray luminosity that scales with their bolometric luminosity and their emission is thought…
We performed spectroscopy of five Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) candidates and two known LBV stars (AE And and Var A-1) in M31. We obtained the same-epoch near-infrared (NIR) and optical spectra of these stars. The NIR spectra were taken…