We examine radiatively driven mass loss from stars near and above the Eddington limit. Building on the standard CAK theory of driving by scattering in an ensemble of lines with a power-law distribution of opacity, we first show that the formal divergence of such line-driven mass loss as a star approaches the Eddington limit is actually limited by the ''photon tiring'' associated with the work needed to lift material out of the star's gravitational potential. We also examine such tiring in simple continuum-driven models in which a specified outward increase in opacity causes a net outward acceleration above the radius where the generalized Eddington parameter exceeds unity. When the density at this radius implies a mass loss too close to the tiring limit, the overall result is flow stagnation at a finite radius. Since escape of a net steady wind is precluded, such circumstances are expected to lead to extensive variability and spatial structure. After briefly reviewing convective and other instabilities that also can be expected to lead to extensive structure in the envelope and atmosphere of a star near or above the Eddington limit, we investigate how the porosity of such a structured medium can reduce the effective coupling between the matter and radiation. Introducing a new ''porosity-length'' formalism, we derive a simple scaling for the reduced effective opacity and use this to derive an associated scaling for the porosity-moderated, continuumdriven mass-loss rate from stars that formally exceed the Eddington limit. For a simple super-Eddington model with a single porosity length that is assumed to be on the order of the gravitational scale height, the overall mass loss is similar to that derived in previous porosity models, given roughly by L à =a à c (where L * is the stellar luminosity and c and a * are the speed of light and the atmospheric sound speed). This is much higher than is typical of line-driven winds but is still only a few percent of the tiring limit. To obtain still stronger mass loss that approaches observationally inferred values near this limit, we draw on an analogy with the power-law distribution of line-opacity in the standard CAK model of line-driven winds and thereby introduce a ''power-law-porosity'' model in which the associated structure has a broad range of scales. We show that for power indices p < 1, the mass-loss rate can be enhanced over the single-scale model by a factor that increases with the Eddington parameter as À À1þ1= p . For lower p (%0.5-0.6) and/or moderately large À (>3-4), such models lead to mass-loss rates that approach the photon-tiring limit. Together with the ability to drive quite fast outflow speeds (of order the surface escape speed), the derived, near-tiring-limited mass loss offers a potential dynamical basis to explain the observationally inferred large mass loss and flow speeds of giant outbursts in Carinae and other luminous blue variable stars.

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We investigate the effects of nonradial line forces on the formation of a "wind-compressed disk" (WCD) around a rapidly rotating B star. Such nonradial forces can arise both from asymmetries in the line resonances in the rotating wind and from rotational distortion of the stellar surface. They characteristically include a latitudinal force component directed away from the equator and an azimuthal force component acting against the sense of rotation. Here we present results from radiation-hydrodynamical simulations showing that these nonradial forces can lead to an effective suppression of the equatorward flow needed to form a WCD as well as a modest (120%) spin-down of the wind rotation. Furthermore, contrary to previous expectations that the wind mass flux should be enhanced by the reduced effective gravity near the equator, we show here that gravity darkening effects can actually lead to a reduced mass loss, and thus lower density, in the wind from the equatorial region.Overall, the results here thus imply a flow configuration that is markedly different from that derived in previous models of winds from rotating early-type stars. In particular, a major conclusion is that equatorial wind compression effects should be effectively suppressed in any radiatively driven stellar wind for which, as in the usual CAK formalism, the driving includes a significant component from optically thick lines. This presents a serious challenge to the WCD paradigm as an explanation for disk formation around Be and other rapidly rotating hot stars thought to have CAK-type, line-driven winds.

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-Results from the most extensive study of the time-evolving dust structure around the prototype "Pinwheel" nebula WR 104 are presented. Encompassing 11 epochs in three near-infrared filter bandpasses, a homogeneous imaging data set spanning more than 6 years (or 10 orbits) is presented. Data were obtained from the highly successful Keck Aperture Masking Experiment, which can recover high fidelity images at extremely high angular resolutions, revealing the geometry of the plume with unprecedented precision. Inferred properties for the (unresolved) underlying binary and wind system are orbital period 241.5±0.5 days and angular outflow velocity of 0.28±0.02 mas/day. An optically thin cavity of angular size 13.3 ± 1.4 mas was found to lie between the central binary and the onset of the spiral dust plume. Rotational motion of the wind system induced by the binary orbit is found to have important ramifications: entanglement of the winds results in strong shock activity far downstream from the nose of the bowshock. The far greater fraction of the winds participating in the collision may play a key role in gas compression and the nucleation of dust at large radii from the central binary and shock stagnation point. Investigation of the effects of radiative braking pointed towards significant modifications of the simple hydrostatic colliding wind geometry, extending the relevance of this phenomena to wider binary systems than previously considered. Limits placed on the maximum allowed orbital eccentricity of e < ∼ 0.06 argue strongly for a prehistory of tidal circularization in this system. Finally we discuss the implications of Earth's polar (i < ∼ 16 • ) vantage point onto a system likely to host supernova explosions at future epochs.

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X-ray satellites since Einstein have empirically established that the X-ray luminosity from single O-stars scales linearly with bolometric luminosity, L x ∼ 10 −7 L bol . But straightforward forms of the most favored model, in which X-rays arise from instabilitygenerated shocks embedded in the stellar wind, predict a steeper scaling, either with mass loss rate L x ∼Ṁ ∼ L 1.7 bol if the shocks are radiative, or with L x ∼Ṁ 2 ∼ L 3.4 bol if they are adiabatic. This paper presents a generalized formalism that bridges these radiative vs. adiabatic limits in terms of the ratio of the shock cooling length to the local radius. Noting that the thin-shell instability of radiative shocks should lead to extensive mixing of hot and cool material, we propose that the associated softening and weakening of the X-ray emission can be parameterized as scaling with the cooling length ratio raised to a power m, the "mixing exponent." For physically reasonable values m ≈ 0.4, this leads to an X-ray luminosity L x ∼Ṁ 0.6 ∼ L bol that matches the empirical scaling. To fit observed X-ray line profiles, we find such radiative-shockmixing models require the number of shocks to drop sharply above the initial shock onset radius. This in turn implies that the X-ray luminosity should saturate and even decrease for optically thick winds with very high mass-loss rates. In the opposite limit of adiabatic shocks in low-density winds (e.g., from B-stars), the X-ray luminosity should drop steeply withṀ 2 . Future numerical simulation studies will be needed to test the general thin-shell mixing ansatz for X-ray emission.

We derive analytic expressions, and approximate them in closed form, for the effective detection aperture for Cerenkov radio emission from ultra-high-energy neutrinos striking the Moon. The resulting apertures are in good agreement with recent Monte Carlo simulations and support the conclusion of James & Protheroe (2009) that neutrino flux upper limits derived from the GLUE search were too low by an order of magnitude. We also use our analytic expressions to derive scaling laws for the aperture as a function of observational and lunar parameters. We find that at low frequencies downward-directed neutrinos always dominate, but at higher frequencies, the contribution from upward-directed neutrinos becomes increasingly important, especially at lower neutrino energies. Detecting neutrinos from Earth near the GZK regime will likely require radio telescope arrays with extremely large collecting area (A e ∼ 10 6 m 2 ) and hundreds of hours exposure time. Higher energy neutrinos are most easily detected using lower frequencies. Lunar surface roughness is a decisive factor for obtaining detections at higher frequencies (ν ∼ > 300 MHz) and higher energies (E ∼ > 10 21 eV).