Results from the 2009 campaign on WR 140
Institute for Astronomy, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, UK
Abstract
The archetypal Wolf-Rayet + O star colliding-wind binary WR140 has a very elliptical orbit, so that maximum interaction between the WR and O winds, and the most rapid changes in configuration, occur around periastron passage. To exploit this laboratory for studying wind-collision and high-energy phenomena, several groups mounted campaigns to observe WR140 intensively around the most recent (2009) periastron passage. These included multi-site optical spectroscopy to refine the radial velocity orbit and study anomalous emission from the shock-compressed wind, infrared spectroscopy to study related features and map the wind-collision region, high-resolution radio imaging of the wind-collision shock, and X-ray observations with RXTE, XMMNewton, Chandra and Suzaku to study physical conditions in the shocks. Some preliminary results from these campaigns will be surveyed and the synergy of multi-wavelength observations considered.