Related papers: Runaway OB Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud: Dy…
The stellar mass-luminosity relation is poorly constrained by observations for high mass stars. We describe our program to find eclipsing massive binaries in the Magellanic Clouds using photometry of regions rich in massive stars, and our…
In the outskirts of nearby spiral galaxies, star formation is observed in extremely low gas surface densities. Star formation in these regions, where the interstellar medium is dominated by diffuse atomic hydrogen, is difficult to explain…
The dense environments in the cores of globular clusters (GCs) facilitate many strong dynamical encounters among stellar objects. These encounters have been shown capable of ejecting stars from the host GC, whereupon they become runaway…
(Abridged) The dynamical ejection of stars from star clusters affects the shape of the stellar mass function (MF) in these clusters, because the escape probability of a star depends on its mass. The objective of this paper is to provide and…
We present a systematic numerical relativity study of the mass ejection and the associated electromagnetic transients and nucleosynthesis from binary neutron star (NS) mergers. We find that a few $10^{-3}\, M_\odot$ of material are ejected…
In the first few Myr the massive stars dynamically interact, produce runaways and affect the initial binary population. Observing and interpreting the dynamics of young massive clusters is key to our understanding of the star formation…
We measure transverse proper motion velocities of LMC Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars using Gaia DR3 astrometry. The combined velocity distribution of WNh, O If*/WN, and WNL very massive stars ($>100\ M_\odot$; VMS) shows both slow, unejected objects…
We have conducted a VLA search for radio pulsars at the positions of 44 nearby OB runaway stars. The observations involved both searching images for point sources of continuum emission and a time series analysis. Our mean flux sensitivity…
In this chapter I review the effects of supernovae explosions on the dynamical evolution of (1) binary stars and (2) star clusters. (1) Supernovae in binaries can drastically alter the orbit of the system, sometimes disrupting it entirely,…
We propose a simple model to explain the velocity of young neutron stars. We attempt to confirm a relationship between the amount of mass ejected in the formation of the neutron star and the `kick' velocity imparted to the compact remnant…
Detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs) allow for the possibility of precise characterization of its stellar components. They offer a unique opportunity to derive their physical parameters in a near-model-independent way for a number of systems…
Massive star evolution plays a crucial role in astrophysics but bares large uncertainties. This problem becomes more severe by the majority of massive stars being born in close binary systems, whose evolution is affected by the interaction…
The percentage of massive main sequence OB stars in binary systems is thought to be as high as 100%. However, very few Galactic binary red supergiants (RSGs) have been identified, despite the fact that these stars are the evolved…
In the present paper we combine an N-body code that simulates the dynamics of young dense stellar systems with a massive star evolution handler that accounts in a realistic way for the effects of stellar wind mass loss. We discuss two…
We present results from a radial velocity study of two runaway O-type stars, HD 14633 (ON8.5 V) and HD 15137 (O9.5 III(n)). We find that HD 14633 is a single-lined spectroscopic binary with an orbital period of 15.4083 days. The second…
Young, OB-type candidates are identified in a ~7900 sq-deg. region encompassing the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC/SMC) periphery, the Bridge, part of the Magellanic Stream (MS) and Leading Arm (LA). Selection is based on UV,…
We present a dense grid of evolutionary tracks and isochrones of rotating massive main-sequence stars. We provide three grids with different initial compositions tailored to compare with early OB stars in the Small and Large Magellanic…
We have conducted a programme to determine the fundamental parameters of a substantial number of eclipsing binaries of spectral types O and B in the Small Magellanic Cloud. New spectroscopic data, obtained with the two-degree-field…
The origin of initial rotation rates of stars, and how a star's surface rotational velocity changes during the evolution, either by internal angular momentum transport or due to interactions with a binary companion, remain open questions in…
In two papers we try to confirm that all Galactic high-mass stars are formed in a cluster environment, by excluding that O-type stars found in the Galactic field actually formed there. In de Wit et al. (2004) we presented deep K-band…