Related papers: Massive Stars in the SMC
Subdwarf B (sdB) stars form the blue end of the horizonal branch. Their peculiar atmospheric abundance patterns are due to diffusion processes. However, diffusion models fail to explain these anomalies quantitatively. From a NLTE model…
Most radiatively-driven massive star winds can be modelled with m-CAK theory resulting in so called fast solution. However, those most rapidly rotating among them, especially when the stellar rotational speed is higher than $\sim 75\%$ of…
Stars with masses in excess of 100 Msun are observed in the Local Universe, but they remain rare objects. Because of the shape of the mass function, they are expected to be present only in the most massive and youngest clusters. They may…
The stellar mass-luminosity relation is poorly constrained by observations for high mass stars. We describe our program to find eclipsing massive binaries in the Magellanic Clouds using photometry of regions rich in massive stars, and our…
In order to investigate the possible influence of rotation on the efficiency of the first dredge-up we determined atmospheric parameters, masses, and abundances of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in a sample of evolved intermediate mass stars.…
We aim to investigate the theoretical bi-stability jump, which predicts an increase in mass-loss rates below 21 kK. We further aim to constrain the photospheric and wind parameters of a sample of 16 LMC late-O and B supergiants. We utilise…
The effect of diffusion on the chemical composition of subdwarf B (sdB) stars and of hot white dwarfs strongly depends on the presence of weak winds. In the paper, for stars with half a solar mass, for various effective temperatures between…
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…
Recent spectropolarimetric surveys of bright, hot stars have found that ~10% of OB-type stars contain strong (mostly dipolar) surface magnetic fields (~kG). The prominent paradigm describing the interaction between the stellar winds and the…
Compression of the stellar winds from rapidly rotating hot stars is described by the wind compression model. However, it was also shown that rapid rotation leads to rotational distortion of the stellar surface, resulting in the appearance…
We summarize recent results of quantitative spectral analyses using NLTE and metal line-blanketed LTE model atmospheres. Temperatures and gravities derived for hundreds of sdB stars are now available and allow us to investigate systematic…
The AF-supergiants in the Galaxy and the SMC allow us to examine predictions from evolution models through their CNO abundances. In these proceedings, we recalculate the NLTE nitrogen abundances in 22 Galactic and 9 SMC A-supergiants using…
Hot subluminous stars can be roughly divided into B- and O-types. Unlike the latter many sdBs are found in close binaries, indicating that binary evolution plays a vital role. Recent NLTE spectral analyses revealed that an evolutionary link…
The formation of stars above about twenty solar masses and their apparently high multiplicity remain heavily debated subjects in astrophysics. We have performed a vast high-resolution radial velocity spectroscopic survey of about 250 O- and…
Observations of nearby molecular clouds detect "shells", which are likely caused by winds from young main sequence stars. However, the progenitors of these observed features are not well characterized and the mass-loss rates inferred from…
We review general characteristics of massive stars, present the main observable constraints that stellar models should reproduce. We discuss the impact of massive star nucleosynthesis on the early phases of the chemical evolution of the…
[Abridged] We present a comprehensive study of the metallicity dependence of the mass-loss rates in stationary stellar winds of hot massive stars. Assuming a power-law dependence of mass loss on metallicity, Mdot \propto Z^{m}, and adopting…
The cluster NGC 3603 hosts some of the most massive stars in the Galaxy. With a modest 50 ks exposure with the Chandra High Energy Grating Spectrometer, we have resolved emission lines in spectra of several of the brightest cluster members…
We present a spectroscopic analysis of VLT/X-Shooter observations of six O-type stars in the low-metallicity (Z ~ 1/7 Z\odot) galaxies IC 1613, WLM and NGC 3109. The stellar and wind parameters of these sources allow us, for the first time,…
[Abridged] Context: Radiation-driven mass loss plays a key role in the life-cycles of massive stars. However, basic predictions of such mass loss still suffer from significant quantitative uncertainties. Aims: We develop new…