Massive stars as a research area encompasses the theoretical, observational, and computational study of stars with initial masses typically ≥8–10 solar masses, focusing on their formation, internal structure, evolution, feedback, and endpoints. This field investigates radiative and mechanical feedback on the interstellar medium, nucleosynthesis and chemical enrichment, stellar winds, rotation, binarity, and magnetic fields, as well as the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and compact remnants. Research integrates multiwavelength observations, stellar evolution and hydrodynamic simulations, and population synthesis to constrain mass loss, convection, mixing processes, and the role of massive stars in galaxy evolution and cosmology.
Researchers at Yunnan Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences simulated the evolution of massive stars with masses ranging from 50 to 150 solar masses during the nitrogen sequence Wolf-Rayet (WNL) star phase.
Astronomy
Nov 21, 2024
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46
Stars with masses between 10 and 30 times that of the sun, in their final evolutionary stages, form an iron core that ultimately collapses into a neutron star. This collapse releases a tremendous amount of gravitational potential ...
Astronomy
Nov 20, 2024
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109
An international team of astronomers has conducted a multiwavelength study of an X-ray binary designated 1eRASS J085039.9-421151. Results of the study, published Nov. 4 on the preprint server arXiv, yield new information ...
An international team of researchers has uncovered evidence that astrophysics models of massive stars and supernovae are inconsistent with observational gamma-ray astronomy.
General Physics
Nov 13, 2024
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77
Massive stars about eight times more massive than the sun explode as supernovae at the end of their lives. The explosions, which leave behind a black hole or a neutron star, are so energetic they can outshine their host galaxies ...
Astronomy
Nov 11, 2024
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102
Using the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), Chinese astronomers have identified nearly 300 candidate supergiant stars in the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies. The finding was reported in ...
Controlled chaos is a key part of forming massive stars. An international team of astronomers has observed evidence that massive stars can be born from rapidly collapsing clouds of gas and dust, challenging long-held assumptions ...
Astronomy
Oct 22, 2024
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108
Astronomers have used data from the European Gaia Space Telescope to discover 55 high-speed stars launched from the young star cluster R136 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. This increases ...
Astronomy
Oct 9, 2024
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30
When a massive star explodes as a supernova, it does more than release an extraordinary amount of energy. Supernovae explosions are responsible for creating some of the heavy elements, including iron, which is blasted out ...
Astronomy
Sep 25, 2024
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