Related papers: The earliest O-type eclipsing binary in the Small …
Stars which start their lives with spectral types O and early-B are the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae, long gamma-ray bursts, neutron stars, and black holes. These massive stars are the primary sources of stellar feedback in…
Most massive stars are believed to be born in close binary systems where they can exchange mass, which impacts the evolution of both binary components. Their evolution is of great interest in the search for the progenitors of gravitational…
The origin of the observed population of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars in low-metallicity (low-Z) galaxies, such as the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), is not yet understood. Standard, single-star evolutionary models predict that WR stars should stem…
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…
New spectroscopic observations of the LBV/WR multiple system HD5980 in the Small Magellanic Cloud are used to address the question of the masses and evolutionary status of the two very luminous stars in the 19.3d eclipsing binary system.…
Context. The majority of massive stars are born with a close binary companion. How this affects their evolution and fate is still largely uncertain, especially at low metallicity. Aims. We derive synthetic populations of massive…
We study the evolution, rotation, and surface abundances of O-type dwarfs in the Small Magellanic Cloud. We analyzed the UV and optical spectra of twenty-three objects and derived photospheric and wind properties. The observed binary…
We present an overview of our recent results from the BLOeM campaign in the Small Magellanic Cloud ($Z=0.2\,{\rm Z}_{\odot}$). Using nine-epoch VLT/FLAMES spectroscopy, we investigated the multiplicity of 929 massive stars. Our findings…
We present a complete set of physical parameters for three early-type eclipsing binary systems in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC): OGLE LMC-ECL-17660, OGLE LMC-ECL-18794, and HV 2274, together with the orbital solutions. The first and…
About a quarter of massive binary stars undergo mass transfer while both stars burn hydrogen at their cores, first on the thermal and then on the nuclear timescale. The nuclear timescale mass transfer leads to observable counterparts: the…
We study the evolutionary and physical properties of evolved O stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), with a special focus on their surface abundances to investigate the efficiency of rotational mixing as a function of age, rotation and…
Standard binary evolutionary models predict a significant population of core helium-burning stars that lost their hydrogen-rich envelope after mass transfer via Roche-lobe overflow. However, there is a scarcity of observations of such…
We present the first results of an observational programme to measure the fundamental parameters of over 100 eclipsing binaries in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The spectroscopic data were obtained by using the 2dF multi-object…
Aluminium-26 is a short-lived radionuclide with a half-life of 0.72Myr, which is observed today in the Galaxy via gamma-ray spectroscopy and is inferred to have been present in the early Solar System via analysis of meteorites. Massive…
One of the major uncertainties in close binary evolution is the efficiency of mass transfer beta: the fraction of transferred mass that is accreted by a secondary star. We attempt to constrain the mass-transfer efficiency for short-period…
We have studied the optical spectra of a sample of 31 O- and early B-type stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, 21 of which are associated with the young massive cluster NGC 346. Stellar parameters are determined using an automated fitting…
Early-type magnetic stars are rarely found in close binary systems. No such objects were known in eclipsing binaries prior to this study. Here we investigated the eclipsing, spectroscopic double-lined binary HD66051, which exhibits…
Massive binary evolution models are needed to predict massive star populations in star forming galaxies, the supernova diversity, and the number and properties of gravitational wave sources. Such models are often computed using so called…
Massive stars with their strong ionizing radiation and strong stellar winds are the key feedback agents of the universe. Stellar winds of massive stars are often measured by fitting resonance lines in the UV using non-LTE stellar atmosphere…
We report the discovery of a double-lined, spectroscopic, eclipsing binary in the Orion star-forming region. We analyze the system spectroscopically and photometrically to empirically determine precise, distance-independent masses, radii,…