The Colliding Winds of WR146: Seeing the Works

WR146 is a WC6+O8 colliding-wind binary (CWB) system with thermal emission from the stellar winds of the two stars, and bright non-thermal emission from the wind-collision region (WCR) where the winds collide. We present high resolution radio observations from 1.4 to 43 GHz that give one of the best quality radio spectra of any CWB to date. Observations at 22 GHz now span 8 years, and reveal the proper motion of the system, allowing comparison of multi-epoch data. VLBI observations show the location of the WCR relative to the stellar components, from which the wind momentum ratio can be shown to be 0.06+/-0.15. The radio spectrum and the spatial distribution of emission are modelled, and we determine the contribution of both stellar winds and the WCR to the observed emission. We show that our current models fail to account for the high frequency spectrum of WR146, and also produce too much emission far from the stagnation point of the wind collision.