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Wolf-Rayet stars (WRs) are one of the final evolutionary stages of massive stars and immediate progenitors of stellar-mass black holes. Their multiplicity forms an important anchor point in single and binary population models for predicting…
The massive Wolf-Rayet type star WR 102c is located near the Quintuplet Cluster - one of the three massive star clusters in the Galactic Center region. Previous studies indicated that WR 102c may have a dusty circumstellar nebula and is…
We present optical photometry and spectra of the peculiar Type Ib supernova (SN) 2006jc. Strong and relatively narrow He I emission lines indicate the progenitor star exploded inside a dense circumstellar medium (CSM) rich in He. An…
Broad-line type Ic Supernovae (BL-Ic SNe) are characterized by high ejecta velocity ($\gtrsim 10^4$ km s$^{-1}$) and are sometimes associated with the relativistic jets typical of long duration ($\gtrsim 2$ s) Gamma-Ray Bursts (L-GRBs). The…
Since the first discovery of a broad-lined type Ic supernova (SN) with a long-duration gamma-ray burst (GRB) in 1998, fewer than fifty gamma-ray burst supernovae (GRB-SNe) have been discovered. The intermediate-luminosity Swift GRB 161219B…
It has been suggested that the peculiar properties of the luminous Type Ic supernova SN 1998bw and its low-energy gamma-ray burst GRB 980425 may be understood if they originated in a standard gamma-ray burst explosion viewed far from the…
New models of rotating and non-rotating stars are computed for initial masses between 25 and 120 Msun and for metallicities Z = 0.004, 0.008, 0.020 and 0.040 with the aim of reexamining the wind contribution of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars to the…
Long-duration GRB 211211A, which lacked an associated supernova at such a low redshift $z=0.076$, but was associated with a possible kilonova emission, has attracted great attention. The neutron star-white dwarf (NS-WD) merger is proposed…
We report the discovery of broad Wolf-Rayet emission lines in the Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) spectrum of the NW component of I Zw 18, the lowest-metallicity blue compact dwarf (BCD) galaxy known. Two broad Wolf-Rayet (W-R) bumps at the…
We interpret the peculiar super-solar nitrogen abundance recently reported by the James Webb Space Telescope observations for GN-z11 ($z=10.6$) using our state-of-the-art chemical evolution models. The observed CNO ratios can be…
High-energy gamma-ray emission is theoretically expected to arise in tight binary star systems (with high mass loss and high velocity winds), although the evidence of this relationship has proven to be elusive so far. Here we present the…
Recent surveys of the Magellanic Clouds have revealed a subtype of Wolf-Rayet (WR) star with peculiar properties. WN3/O3 spectra exhibit both WR-like emission and O3 V-like absorption - but at lower luminosity than O3 V or WN stars. We…
A class of supernovae (SNe) termed `SN Ic-CSM' are characterized by late-time emergence of narrow emission lines of elements formed in the oxygen core of a massive star. A popular scenario is the interaction of the SN ejecta and O-rich…
IRS 13E is an infrared, mm and X-ray source in the Galactic Centre. We present the first Chandra X-ray spectrum for IRS 13E and show that it is consistent with a luminous and highly absorbed X-ray binary system. Since the X-ray luminosity…
The detection of 1.809 MeV gamma-ray line emission from the Cygnus X complex by the COMPTEL telescope is one of the most convincing proves of massive star nucleosynthesis in our Galaxy. The Cygnus X complex is an extremely active nearby…
Wolf-Rayet stars embody the final stable phase of the most massive stars immediately before their evolution is terminated in a supernova explosion. They are responsible for some of the most extreme and energetic phenomena in stellar…
It is thought that Galactic cosmic ray (CR) nuclei are gradually accelerated to high energies (up to ~300 TeV/nucleon, where 1TeV=10^12eV) in the expanding shock-waves connected with the remnants of powerful supernova explosions. However,…
We report the first NuSTAR hard X-ray observations of the low-luminosity active galactic nucleus NGC 4278. The source is clearly detected beyond 10 keV with a hard X-ray spectrum consistent with a power law of photon index between 2.2 and…
We have used the excellent sensitivity of XMM-Newton to obtain the first high-quality X-ray spectrum of a Wolf-Rayet (WR) star which is not known to be a member of a binary system. Our target, the nitrogen-type star WR 110 (= HD 165688) was…
The energy source has remained to be the great mystery in understanding of the gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) if the events are placed at cosmological distances as indicated by a number of recent observations. The currently popular models include…