Related papers: Eta Car and other LBVs

An increasing number of non-terminal eruptions are being found in the numerous surveys for optical transients. Very little is known about these giant eruptions, their progenitors and their evolutionary state. A greatly improved census of…

Luminous blue variables (LBVs) are expected to play an important role in massive stellar evolution as well as being the progenitors of some of the most luminous supernovae known. In this paper we provide a multiwavelength study of the…

In the standard view of massive star evolution, luminous blue variables (LBVs) are transitional objects between the most massive O-type stars and Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. With short lifetimes, these stars should all be found near one another.…

The Luminous Blue Variable stars exhibit behavior ranging from light curve `microvariations' on timescales of tens of days, to `outbursts' accompanied by mass loss of up to 10e-03 solar masses per year, occurring decades apart, to `giant…

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)…

Luminous blue variables (LBVs) are characterized by semi-periodic episodes of enhanced mass-loss, or outburst. The cause of these outbursts has thus far been a mystery. One explanation is that they are initiated by kappa-effect pulsations…

Luminous blue variables (LBVs) are hot, very luminous massive stars displaying large quasi-periodic variations in brightness, radius,and photospheric temperature, on timescales of years to decades. The physical origin of this variability,…

A debate has arisen concerning the fundamental nature of LBVs) and their role in stellar evolution. While Smith and Tombleson proposed that their isolated environments indicate that LBVs must be largely the product of binary evolution,…

The Luminous Blue Variable star Eta Carinae is one of the most massive stars known. It underwent a giant eruption in 1843 in which the Homunculus nebula was created. ROSAT and ASCA data indicate the existence of a hard and a soft X-ray…

We report optical observations of the Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) HR Carinae which show that the star has reached a visual minimum phase in 2009. More importantly, we detected absorptions due to Si IV 4088-4116 Angstroms. To match their…

Massive evolved stars in transition phases, such as Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs), B[e] Supergiants (B[e]SGs), and Yellow Hypergiants (YHGs), are not well understood, and yet crucial steps in determining accurate stellar and galactic…

In a recent paper, Smith and Tombleson (2015) state that the Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs) in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds are isolated; that they are not spatially associated with young O-type stars. They propose a novel…

Stars more massive than about 8 Msun end their lives as a Supernova (SN), an event of fundamental importance Universe-wide. Theoretically, these stars have been expected to be either at the red supergiant, blue supergiant, or Wolf-Rayet…

We study the runaway mass loss process of major eruptions of luminous blue variables (LBVs) stars, such as the 1837-1856 Great Eruption of Eta Carinae. We follow the evolution of a massive star with a spherical stellar evolution numerical…

Very massive stars shed much of their mass in violent precursor eruptions as luminous blue variables (LBVs) before reaching their most likely end as supernovae, but the cause of LBV eruptions is unknown. The 19th century eruption of Eta…

The evolutionary relationships and mechanisms governing the behavior of the wide variety of luminous stars populating the upper H-R diagram are not well established. Luminous blue variables (LBVs) are particularly rare, with only a few…

We present HR Diagrams for the massive star populations in M31 and M33 including several different types of emission-line stars: the confirmed Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs), candidate LBVs, B[e] supergiants and the warm hypergiants. We…

First results of near-IR adaptive optics (AO)-assisted imaging, interferometry, and spectroscopy of this Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) are presented. They suggest that the Pistol Star is at least double. If the association is physical, it…

We performed spectroscopy of five Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) candidates and two known LBV stars (AE And and Var A-1) in M31. We obtained the same-epoch near-infrared (NIR) and optical spectra of these stars. The NIR spectra were taken…

Mass loss is one of the key parameters that determine stellar evolution. Despite the progress we have achieved over the last decades we still cannot match the observational derived values with theoretical predictions. Even worse, there are…