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A massive helium star with a sufficiently strong magnetic field to form a magnetar

Wade, Gregg A.; Toonen, Silvia; Sana, Hugues +13 more

Magnetars are highly magnetized neutron stars, the formation mechanism of which is unknown. Hot helium-rich stars with spectra dominated by emission lines are known as Wolf-Rayet stars. We observed the binary system HD 45166 using spectropolarimetry and reanalyzed its orbit using archival data. We found that the system contains a Wolf-Rayet star w…