Related papers: The colliding-wind WC9+OB system WR 65 and dust fo…
Infrared photometry of the probable triple WC4(+O?)+O8I: Wolf-Rayet system HD 36402 (= BAT99-38) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) shows emission characteristic of heated dust. The dust emission is variable on a time-scale of years, with…
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…
The wind collision region (WCR) in a colliding wind binary (CWB) is a particularly violent place, as such, it is surprising that it is also a region where significant quantities of interstellar dust can form. In extreme cases, approximately…
Classical Wolf-Rayet stars are the descendants of massive OB stars that have lost their hydrogen envelopes and are burning helium in their cores prior to exploding as type Ib/c supernovae. The mechanisms for losing their hydrogen envelopes…
WR 140 is a long-period, highly eccentric Wolf-Rayet star binary system with exceptionally well-determined orbital and stellar parameters. Bright, variable X-ray emission is generated in shocks produced by the collision of the winds of the…
Aims: We wish to study the origin of the X-ray emission of three massive stars in the Cyg OB2 association: Cyg OB2 #5, #8A, #12. Methods: To this aim, dedicated X-ray observations from XMM and Swift are used, as well as archival ROSAT and…
We have developed radiative transfer models of the radio emission from colliding-wind binaries (CWB) based on a hydrodynamical treatment of the wind-collision region (WCR). The archetype of CWB systems is the 7.9-yr period binary WR140,…
Context: Nonthermal radio emission in massive stars is expected to arise in wind-wind collisions occurring inside a binary system. One such case, the O-type star Cyg OB2 #9, was proven to be a binary only four years ago, but the orbital…
WR140 is the archetype long-period colliding wind binary (CWB) system, and is well known for dramatic variations in its synchrotron emission during its 7.9-yr, highly eccentric orbit. This emission is thought to arise from relativistic…
When two massive stars orbit each other, their winds create a shock cone. In some cases, an evolved, carbon-rich Wolf-Rayet (WR) star's wind collides with that of an orbiting OB star, condensing into dust downstream. This dust is then seen…
A campaign of 35 epochs of milli-arcsec resolution VLBA observations of the archetype collidingwind WR+O star binary system WR140 show the wind-collision region (WCR) as a bow-shaped arc of emission that rotates as the highly eccentric…
We present the first near-infrared images of dusty Wolf-Rayet star WR 98a. Aperture masking interferometry has been utilized to recover images at the diffraction-limit of the Keck-I telescope, ~<50 mas at 2.2 micron. Multi-epoch…
Some carbon-rich Wolf-Rayet stars (WC stars) show an infrared excess from dust emission. Dust forms in the collision of the WC wind with a companion star's wind. As this dust is carried towards the ISM at close to the WCd wind speed and the…
Most Wolf-Rayet stars (WR) of WC9 sub-type exhibit a dusty circumstellar envelope, but it is still a matter of debate how dust can form in their harsh environment. In a few cases, a pinwheel-like structure of the dusty envelope has been…
This paper discusses our ongoing efforts to characterize dust-enshrouded Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars in the radio and infrared. We have used the Very Large Array to measure the broadband radio spectrum of WR stars in suspected binary systems and…
We present the results of an optical spectroscopic study of the massive Wolf-Rayet binary WR137. These data cover the dust-formation maximum in 1997. Combining all available measurements of radial velocities, we derive, for the first time,…
The star Cyg OB2 No. 9 is a well-known non-thermal radio emitter. Recent theoretical work suggests that all such O-stars should be in a binary or a multiple system. However, there is no spectroscopic evidence of a binary component.…
We present new radio and optical observations of the colliding-wind system WR146 aimed at understanding the nature of the companion to the Wolf-Rayet star and the collision of their winds. The radio observations reveal emission from three…
The Cyg OB2 #5 system is thought to consist of a short-period (6.6 d) eclipsing massive binary orbited by an OB-star orbiting with a period of ~6.7 yr; these stars in turn are orbited by a distant early B-star with a period of thousands of…
Using XMM-Newton, we undertook a dedicated project to search for X-ray bright wind-wind collisions in 18 WR+OB systems. We complemented these observations with Swift and Chandra datasets, allowing for the study of two additional systems. We…