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Nanogradient polymer brushes
(2012)
Wolf-Rayet Stars
(2015)
Nearly 150 years ago, the French astronomers Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet described stars with very conspicuous spectra that are dominated by bright and broad emission lines. Meanwhile termed Wolf-Rayet Stars after their discoverers, those objects turned out to represent important stages in the life of massive stars.
As the first conference in a long time that was specifically dedicated to Wolf-Rayet stars, an international workshop was held in Potsdam, Germany, from 1.-5. June 2015. About 100 participants, comprising most of the leading experts in the field as well as as many young scientists, gathered for one week of extensive scientific exchange and discussions. Considerable progress has been reported throughout, e.g. on finding such stars, modeling and analyzing their spectra, understanding their evolutionary context, and studying their circumstellar nebulae. While some major questions regarding Wolf-Rayet stars still remain open 150 years after their discovery, it is clear today that these objects are not just interesting stars as such, but also keystones in the evolution of galaxies.
These proceedings summarize the talks and posters presented at the Potsdam Wolf-Rayet workshop. Moreover, they also include the questions, comments, and discussions emerging after each talk, thereby giving a rare overview not only about the research, but also about the current debates and unknowns in the field. The Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC) included Alceste Bonanos (Athens), Paul Crowther (Sheffield), John Eldridge (Auckland), Wolf-Rainer Hamann (Potsdam, Chair), John Hillier (Pittsburgh), Claus Leitherer (Baltimore), Philip Massey (Flagstaff), George Meynet (Geneva), Tony Moffat (Montreal), Nicole St-Louis (Montreal), and Dany Vanbeveren (Brussels).
e-ASTROGAM is a concept for a breakthrough observatory space mission carrying a gamma-ray telescope dedicated to the study of the non-thermal Universe in the photon energy range from 0.15 MeV to 3 GeV. The lower energy limit can be pushed down to energies as low as 30 keV for gamma-ray burst detection with the calorimeter. The mission is based on an advanced space-proven detector technology, with unprecedented sensitivity, angular and energy resolution, combined with remarkable polarimetric capability. Thanks to its performance in the MeV-GeV domain, substantially improving its predecessors, e-ASTROGAM will open a new window on the non-thermal Universe, making pioneering observations of the most powerful Galactic and extragalactic sources, elucidating the nature of their relativistic outflows and their effects on the surroundings. With a line sensitivity in the MeV energy range one to two orders of magnitude better than previous and current generation instruments, e-ASTROGAM will determine the origin of key isotopes fundamental for the understanding of supernova explosion and the chemical evolution of our Galaxy. The mission will be a major player of the multiwavelength, multimessenger time-domain astronomy of the 2030s, and provide unique data of significant interest to a broad astronomical community, complementary to powerful observatories such as LISA, LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA, the Einstein Telescope and the Cosmic Explorer, IceCube-Gen2 and KM3NeT, SKA, ALMA, JWST, E-ELT, LSST, Athena, and the Cherenkov Telescope Array.