Related papers: A multi-wavelength view on the dusty Wolf-Rayet st…

Massive stars produce strong stellar winds that consist of continuous outflows of material at speeds of thousands of km/s. These winds convey large amounts of kinetic power, especially in the case of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. When these winds…

Radio observations are an effective tool to discover particle acceleration regions in colliding-wind binaries, through detection of synchrotron radiation; these regions are natural laboratories for the study of relativistic particles.…

We present high-resolution infrared (2--18 micron) images of the archetypal periodic dust-making Wolf-Rayet binary system WR140 (HD 193793) taken between 2001 and 2005, and multi-colour (J -- [19.5]) photometry observed between 1989 and…

Carbon-rich Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are significant contributors of carbonaceous dust to the galactic environment, however the mechanisms and conditions for formation and subsequent evolution of dust around these stars remain open questions.…

Determining the Galactic distribution and numbers of massive stars, such as Wolf-Rayet stars (WRs), is hampered by intervening Galactic or local circumstellar dust obscuration. In order to probe such regions of the Galaxy we can use…

Spectroscopic observations of white dwarfs reveal that many of them are polluted by exoplanetary material, whose bulk composition can be uniquely probed this way. We present a spectroscopic and photometric analysis of the DA white dwarf…

Most massive stars reside in multiple systems that will interact over the course of their lifetime. Classical Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars represent the final end stages of stellar evolution at the upper-mass end. As part of a homogeneous,…

New NTT/SOFI imaging and spectroscopy of the Wolf-Rayet population in Westerlund 1 are presented. Narrow-band near-IR imaging together with follow up spectroscopy reveals four new WR stars, of which three were independently identified…

Examination of the temporal variability properties of several strong optical recombination lines in a large sample of Galactic Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars reveals possible trends, especially in the more homogeneous WC than the diverse WN…

The problem of explaining the X-ray emission properties of the massive, close binary WR 20a is discussed. Located near the cluster core of Westerlund 2, WR 20a is composed of two nearly identical Wolf- Rayet stars of 82 and 83 solar masses…

The fast, dense winds which characterize Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars obscure their underlying cores, and complicate the verification of evolving core and nucleosynthesis models. Core evolution can be probed by measuring abundances of wind-borne…

Wolf-Rayet stars embody the final stable phase of the most massive stars immediately before their evolution is terminated in a supernova explosion. They are responsible for some of the most extreme and energetic phenomena in stellar…

Blazars are highly variable, radio-loud active galactic nuclei with jets oriented at a small angle to the line of sight. The observed emission of these sources covers the whole electromagnetic spectrum from radio frequencies up to the high…

WR 25 is a colliding-wind binary star system comprised of a very massive O2.5If*/WN6 primary and an O-star secondary in a 208-day period eccentric orbit. These hot stars have strong, highly-supersonic winds which interact to form a bright…

This review briefly summarizes our knowledge of the X-ray emission from single WN, WC, and WO stars. These stars have relatively modest X-ray luminosities, typically not exceeding L_sun. The analysis of X-ray spectra usually reveals thermal…

In this work, we present the first AMBER observations, of the Wolf-Rayet and O (WR+O) star binary system y2 Velorum. The AMBER instrument was used with the telescopes UT2, UT3, and UT4 on baselines ranging from 46m to 85m. It delivered…

Accurately quantifying the rates dM/dt at which massive stars lose mass is essential to any understanding of their evolution. All dM/dt estimates to date assume wind clumping factors; not allowing for clumping leads to overestimates of…

We present mid-infrared spectra of the microquasar SS 433 obtained with the Infrared Space Observatory (spectroscopic mode of ISOPHOT) and compare them to the spectra of four Wolf-Rayet stars. The mid-infrared spectrum of SS 433 shows…

The Halpha and optical broadband images of 25 nearby Wolf-Rayet (WR) galaxies are presented. The WR galaxies are known to have the presence of a recent ($\le$10 Myr) and massive star formation episode. The photometric Halpha fluxes are…

The carbon-rich WC5 star WR 114 was not detected during a 15.9 ksec XMM-Newton observation, implying an upper limit to the X-ray luminosity of Lx < 2.5*10^{30} erg/s and to the X-ray to bolometric luminosity ratio of Lx/Lbol < 4*10^{-9}.…