Related papers: A New LBV Candidate in M33
The advanced stages of several high-mass stars are characterized by episodic mass loss shed during phases of instability. Key for assigning these stars a proper evolutionary state is to assess the composition and geometry of their ejecta…
Stars exhibit a bewildering variety of rapidly variable behaviors ranging from explosive magnetic flares to stochastically changing accretion to periodic pulsations or rotation. The principal Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and…
The upper region of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is populated by massive stars in a diversity of evolutionary stages, and the classification of these stars is often based on observed characteristics exclusively in the optical spectral…
We report the discovery of a circular mid-infrared shell around the emission-line star Wray 16-137 using archival data of the Spitzer Space Telescope. Follow-up optical spectroscopy of Wray 16-137 with the Southern African Large Telescope…
We present the first systematic spectropolarimetric study of Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs) in the Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds, in order to investigate the geometries of their winds. We find that at least half of our sample show…
Multi-wavelength studies of their circumstellar environments around LBVs are essential to quantify their feedback at Galactic scales. Dominant emission mechanisms at millimetre wavelengths are, however, still poorly understood. Stellar…
We present two new luminous blue variable (LBV) candidate stars discovered in the M33 galaxy. We identified these stars (Valeev et al. 2010) as massive star candidates at the final stages of evolution, presumably with a notable interstellar…
Hypervelocity stars (HVSs) represent a unique class of objects capable of escaping the gravitational pull of the Milky Way due to extreme acceleration events, such as close encounters with the supermassive black hole at the Galactic center…
We report on the preliminary results of a three-year monitoring campaign of Galactic and Magellanic LBVs with both moderate and high resolution spectroscopy. We have collected more than 500 moderate-resolution spectra of 20 stars in the red…
Here we examine 12 Galactic clusters and OB associations containing Wolf-Rayet stars (W-Rs) and/or Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs), in order to assess the progentor masses of these evolved massive stars. We find that in the Milky Way,…
If a massive star has lost significant mass during its red-supergiant stage, it would return to blue region in the HR diagram and spend a part of the core-He burning stage as a blue supergiant having a luminosity to mass ratio (L/M)…
Stars exhibit a bewildering variety of variable behaviors ranging from explosive magnetic flares to stochastically changing accretion to periodic pulsations or rotations. The principal LSST surveys will have cadences too sparse and…
Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) stars are evolved massive objects, previous to core-collapse supernova. LBVs are characterized by photometric and spectroscopic variability, produced by strong and dense winds, mass-loss events and very intense…
We present time-series photometry of 11 hypervelocity stars (HVSs) to constrain their nature. Known HVSs are mostly late-B spectral type objects that may be either main-sequence (MS) or evolved blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars.…
In this paper, we report the results of spectroscopic and photometric observations of the candidate evolved massive star MN48 disclosed via detection of a mid-infrared circular shell around it with the Spitzer Space Telescope. Follow-up…
Among the most spectacular variable stars are the Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs), which can show three types of variability. The LBV phase of evolution is poorly understood, and the driving mechanisms for the variability are not known. The…
Using the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope, we have obtained deep far-ultraviolet images of the compact elliptical galaxy M32. When combined with earlier near-ultraviolet images of the same field, these…
We present the results of optical spectroscopic observations of 54 candidate evolved massive stars revealed through the detection of mid-infrared nebulae of various shapes surrounding them with the {\it Spitzer Space Telescope} and {\it…
We have used DOLORES at the TNG to obtain B,V time series photometry of NGC 2419, one of the most distant and bright clusters in the Galactic halo. These data will be used to study its variable star population in order to check whether the…
I review the observational constraints on the stars responsible for the upturn in the UV spectra of ellipticals, ranging from galaxies in the local Universe to distant clusters. In nearby galaxies, this UV upturn is produced by a minority…