Massive Stars as the Radiant Queens of the Universe—The Case of ζ Puppis

Abstract

Since the Cosmic Dawn, massive stars have been playing a crucial role as the chemical recycling engines of galaxies that enable the birth of new stars and planetary systems, not only through the strong winds that they exhibit during their relatively short lifetimes, but also through their catastrophic endings as supernovae, and even with occasional posthumous kilonovae events resulting from binary neutron star mergers and neutron star/black hole mergers. Hence, understanding the structures of massive stars and their winds is key to understanding galactic ecosystems. One tool that has proven to be very powerful in constraining the structures of various types of stars is the study of physical phenomena causing observable stellar light variability. Among massive stars, the O-type star ζ Puppis is considered the archetype of a hot, massive star and is almost always invoked in massive star studies. This article presents a highlight review of key results yielded by monitoring efforts of ζ Pup across different wavelength ranges thus far.