Related papers: UV Spectropolarimetry with Polstar: Massive Star B…
The clumping of massive star winds is an established paradigm, which is confirmed by multiple lines of evidence and is supported by stellar wind theory. We use the results from time-dependent hydrodynamical models of the instability in the…
Context. The uncertainty in the degree to which radiation-driven winds of hot stars might be affected by small inhomogeneities in the density leads to a corresponding uncertainty in the determination of the atmospheric mass loss rates from…
Stellar magnetism, explorable via polarimetry, is a crucial driver of activity, ionization, photodissociation, chemistry and winds in stellar environments. Thus it has an important impact on the atmospheres and magnetospheres of surrounding…
Mass-loss rates currently in use for hot, massive stars have recently been seriously questioned, mainly because of the effects of wind clumping. We investigate the impact of clumping on diagnostic ultraviolet resonance and optical…
New observations of 9 of the brightest northern O stars have been made with the Breger polarimeter on the 0.9~m telescope at McDonald Observatory and the AnyPol polarimeter on the 0.4~m telescope at Limber Observatory, using the…
Context: The commonly accepted mass-luminosity relation of central stars of planetary nebulae (CSPNs) might not be universally valid. While earlier optical analyses could not derive masses and luminosities independently (instead taking them…
We present a prospective work undertaken on Spectro-Polarimetric INterferometry (SPIN). Our theoretical studies suggest that SPIN is a powerful tool for studying the mass loss from early type stars. Based on Monte Carlo simulations, we…
The velocity and density distribution of $e^\pm$ in the pulsar wind are crucial distinction among magnetosphere models, and contains key parameters determining the high energy emission of pulsar binaries. In this work, a direct method is…
High-mass gamma-ray binaries are powerful nonthermal galactic sources, some of them hosting a pulsar whose relativistic wind interacts with a likely inhomogeneous stellar wind. So far, modeling these sources including stellar wind…
We investigate the effects of inverse Compton scattering by electrons and positrons in the unshocked winds of rotationally-powered binary pulsars. This process can scatter low energy target photons to produce gamma rays with energies from…
High resolution UV spectra of stellar H I Lyman-alpha lines from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) provide observational constraints on the winds of coronal main sequence stars, thanks to an astrospheric absorption signature created by the…
A review of spectroscopic results obtained from Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer and XMM-Newton Reflection Grating Spectrometer observations of several wind-fed high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) is presented. These…
The polarization state of starlight reflected by a planetary atmosphere uniquely reveals coverage, particle size, and composition of aerosols as well as changing cloud patterns. It is not possible to obtain a comparable level of detailed…
Mass loss governs the evolution of massive stars and shapes the stellar surroundings. To quantify the impact of the stellar winds we need to know the exact mass-loss rates; however, empirical constraints on the rates are hampered by limited…
We perform numerical simulations to investigate the stellar wind from interacting binary stars. Our aim is to find analytical formulae describing the outflow structure. In each binary system the more massive star is in the asymptotic giant…
Nearly all types of massive stars with radiatively driven stellar winds are X-ray sources that can be observed by the presently operating powerful X-ray telescopes. In this review I briefly address recent advances in our understanding of…
This brief review describes radio observations of colliding winds in massive stars starting with the first direct observational support for the colliding-wind model advanced in the early 1990's to explain non-thermal radio and thermal X-ray…
The common - arguably ubiquitous - large-scale variability of optical and UV lines profiles of hot, massive stars is widely interpreted as the direct consequence of structured, variable winds. Many of the variability phenomena are observed…
We present theoretical X-ray line profiles from a range of model colliding wind systems. In particular, we investigate the effects of varying the stellar mass-loss rates, the wind speeds, and the viewing orientation. We find that a wide…
High mass X-ray binaries hold the promise of giving us understanding of the structure of the winds of their supermassive companion stars by using the emission from the compact object as a backlight to evaluate the variable absorption in the…