Related papers: X-ray emission from old and intermediate age brown…
We use X-ray observations of the nearby binaries 61 Cyg A/B (K5V and K7V) and Alpha Cen A/B (G2V and K1V) to study the long-term evolution of magnetic activity in weakly to moderately active G + K dwarfs over nearly a decade. Specifically…
Up to now, most planet search projects have concentrated on F to K stars. In order to considerably widen the view, we have stated a survey for planets of old, nearby brown dwarfs and very low mass stars. Using UVES, we have observed 26…
We summarize new X-ray detections of four nitrogen-type Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars obtained in a limited survey aimed at establishing the X-ray properties of WN stars across their full range of spectral subtypes. None of the detected stars is so…
Supergiant fast X-ray transients (SFXTs) are a sub-class of supergiant high mass X-ray binaries hosting a neutron star accreting from the stellar wind of a massive OB companion. Compared to the classical systems, SFXTs display a pronounced…
XMM-Newton has deeply changed our picture of X-ray emission of hot, massive stars. High-resolution X-ray spectroscopy as well as monitoring of these objects helped us gain a deeper insight into the physics of single massive stars with or…
We review the current state of observational work on the formation of brown dwarfs, focusing on their initial mass function, velocity and spatial distributions at birth, multiplicity, accretion, and circumstellar disks. The available…
We present an XMM-Newton observation of the nearby dwarf galaxy IC 2574. This galaxy is part of our ensemble observed within a multi-frequency campaign to study the physical conditions of the interstellar medium in dwarf galaxies in…
The past two decades have witnessed the rapid growth of our knowledge of the X-ray Universe thanks to flagship X-ray space observatories like XMM-Newton and Chandra. A significant portion of discoveries would have been impossible without…
The 2001 discovery of radio emission from ultra-cool dwarfs (UCDs), the very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs with spectral types of ~M7 and later, revealed that these objects can generate and dissipate powerful magnetic fields. Radio…
A number of Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXPs) have recently been detected in the optical/IR wavelengths. We use their inferred brightness to place general constraints on any model for this emission within the magnetar framework. We find that…
We study the conditions under which a main sequence binary companion to the central ionizing star of a planetary nebula (PN) might become magnetically active and thereby display strong X-ray luminosity. Since most PNe are older than few…
We have made a series of snap-shot observations of 37 polars using XMM-Newton. We found that 16 of these systems were in a low, or much reduced, accretion state. Of those, 6 were not detected in X-rays. This suggests that in any survey of…
We make use of the largest and most homogeneous sample of white dwarf/M dwarf (WD/dM) binaries from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS DR7) to investigate relations between magnetic activity, rotation, magnetic braking and age in M stars.…
We develop a model based on 3D mean-field MHD for the generation of large scale magnetic fields in fully convective objects like low-mass stars, brown dwarfs and possibly gaseous planets. The dynamo process is of alpha^2 type and thus…
We present the first results of our X-ray monitoring campaign on a 1.7 square degree region centered on Sgr A* using the satellites XMM-Newton and Chandra. The purpose of this campaign is to monitor the behavior (below 10 keV) of X-ray…
Magnetars are a unique class of neutron stars characterized by their incredibly strong magnetic fields. Unlike normal pulsars whose X-ray emission was driven by rotational energy loss, magnetars exhibit distinct X-ray emissions thought to…
We have measured high-precision parallaxes for a large sample of candidate young (~10-100 Myr) and intermediate-age (~100-600 Myr) ultracool dwarfs, with spectral types ranging from M8 to T2.5. These objects are compelling benchmarks for…
Although mid-to-late type M dwarfs are the most common stars in our stellar neighborhood, our knowledge of these objects is still limited. Open questions include the evolution of their angular momentum, internal structures, dust settling in…
We review our the status of the photometric searches of brown dwarfs and vely low mass stars in several young open clusters and present some results on the spectroscopic follow-up, including new cluster ages based on the position of the…
Ultramagnetized neutron stars or magnetars have been invoked to explain several astrophysical phenomena. We examine how the magnetic field of a magnetar will decay over time and how this decay affects the cooling of the object. We find that…