Related papers: An Orbit for a Massive Wolf-Rayet Binary in the LM…
With their emission-line dominated spectra, the appearance of Wolf-Rayet stars is shaped by their strong stellar winds. Yet, the physical mechanisms behind their high mass loss have long remained enigmatic. While we know nowadays that…
Because most massive stars have been or will be affected by a companion during the course of their evolution, we cannot afford to neglect binaries when discussing the progenitors of supernovae and GRBs. Analyzing linear polarization in the…
We present a high-precision I-band light curve for the Wolf-Rayet binary WR 20a, obtained as a sub-project of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment. Rauw et al. have recently presented spectroscopy for this system, strongly…
While observing OB stars within the most crowded regions of the Large Magellanic Cloud, we happened upon a new Wolf-Rayet star in Lucke-Hodge 41, the rich OB association that contains S Doradus and numerous other massive stars. At first…
Mid-infrared photometry of the Wolf-Rayet star HD 38030 in the Large Magellanic Cloud from the NEOWISE-R mission show it to have undergone a dust-formation episode in 2018 and the dust to have cooled in 2019-20. New spectroscopy with the…
Vigorous mass loss in the classical Wolf-Rayet (WR) phase is important for the late evolution and final fate of massive stars. We develop spherically symmetric time-dependent and steady-state hydrodynamical models of the radiation-driven…
The Wolf-Rayet (WR) binary system WR140 is a close (0.9-16.7 mas) binary star consisting of an O5 primary and WC7 companion and is known as the archetype of episodic dust-producing WRs. Dust in WR binaries is known to form in a confined…
Determining accurate orbits of binary stars with powerful winds is challenging. The dense outflows increase the effective photospheric radius, precluding direct observation of the Keplerian motion; instead the observables are broad lines…
Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are the most advanced stage in the evolution of the most massive stars. The strong feedback provided by these objects and their subsequent supernova (SN) explosions are decisive for a variety of astrophysical topics…
WR 25 is a colliding-wind binary star system comprised of a very massive O2.5If*/WN6 primary and an O-star secondary in a 208-day period eccentric orbit. These hot stars have strong, highly-supersonic winds which interact to form a bright…
Context. Wolf-Rayet (WR) and O-star binaries can be the progenitors of X-ray binaries and double black hole binaries. Their formation is not yet fully understood, however. For 21 observed WR+O systems, we aim to infer whether the mass…
An X-ray study of a deeply embedded Wolf-Rayet star WR 121a has been carried out using long-term (spanning over ~12 years) archival observations from Chandra and XMM-Newton. For the first time, a periodic variation with a period of 4.1 days…
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 show that black-hole High-Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs) with O- or B-type donor stars and relatively short orbital periods, of order one week to several months may survive spiral in, to then form Wolf-Rayet (WR) X-ray binaries with orbital…
Milli-arcsecond resolution Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations of the archetype WR+O star colliding-wind binary (CWB) system WR140 are presented for 23 epochs between orbital phases 0.74 and 0.97. At 8.4 GHz, the emission in the…
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…
We examine the dependence of the wind-wind collision and subsequent X-ray emission from the massive WR+O star binary WR~22 on the acceleration of the stellar winds, radiative cooling, and orbital motion. Simulations were performed with…
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…
An analysis of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) WC4 star BAT99-9 (HD 32125, FD 4, Brey 7, WS 3) shows that the star still contains photospheric nitrogen. Three N emission features (N V $\lambda\lambda 1238,1242$, N IV $\lambda 1719$, N IV…
The hot star HDE 326823 is a candidate transition-phase object that is evolving into a nitrogen-enriched Wolf-Rayet star. It is also a known low-amplitude, photometric variable with a 6.123 d period. We present new, high and moderate…