Supernovae and Stellar Mass Loss

Conference Summary: Mass Loss from Stellar Clusters

Mass loss at the lowest stellar masses ⋆

We report the discovery of a jet in a [SII] image of Par-Lup3-4, a remarkable M5-type pre-main sequence object in the Lupus 3 star-forming cloud. The spectrum of this star is dominated by the emission lines commonly interpreted as tracers of accretion and outflows. Par-Lup3-4 is therefore at the very low-mass end of the exciting sources of jets. High resolution spectroscopy shows that the [SII]...

Supernovae, Gamma-Ray Bursts, and Stellar Rotation

One of the most dramatic possible consequences of stellar rotation is its influence on stellar death, particularly of massive stars. If the angular momentum of the iron core when it collapses is such as to produce a neutron star with a period of 5 ms or less, rotation will have important consequences for the supernova explosion mechanism. Still shorter periods, corresponding to a neutron star r...

Mass Loss from Stars and the Evolution of Stellar Clusters

New NTT/SOFI near-IR narrow-band imaging and spectroscopy reveals an additional four Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars in the massive cluster Westerlund 1, bringing the total WR population to 24. Sixteen of the WR stars in Wd1 have been classified WN5–11, while eight are WC8–9. An observed WR to RSG/YHG ratio of ∼3 suggests an age of 4.5–5.0 Myr, with WR stars descended from 40–55M⊙ progenitors. On the bas...

Mass-loss predictions and stellar masses of early-type stars

We show that the stellar masses implied by our predictions of the wind properties of massive stars are in agreement with masses derived from evolution theory and from direct measurements using spectroscopic binaries, contrary to previous attempts to derive masses from wind theory.