2025MNRAS.539.1291P

Individually identified binary systems of very massive stars define fixed points on possible evolutionary pathways that begin with extreme star formation and end in either coalescence of compact remnants or complete disruption as pair-production supernovae. The Large Magellanic Cloud star Melnick 39 in the Tarantula Nebula is revealed to be an eccentric ($e = 0.618\pm 0.014$) binary system of a reasonably long period from time series analysis of Chandra T-ReX (The Tarantula - Resolved by X-rays) X-ray observations. Its X-ray luminosity scales with the inverse of the binary separation, as expected for colliding-wind binaries in the adiabatic regime. The inclusion of optical time series spectroscopy from the VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey and archival Hubble Space Telescope spectroscopy confirms Melnick 39 as a double-lined O2.5 If/WN6+O3 V-III spectroscopic binary with orbital period near 648 d. We obtain a mass ratio of $q = 0.76 \pm 0.06$, and minimum dynamical masses of $105\pm 11$ and $80\pm 11 \, {\rm M}_{\odot }$ for the O2.5 If/WN6 and O3 V-III components, plus photometric evidence for an orbital inclination near $90^{\circ }$. Disentangled spectroscopy allows the physical and wind properties of the primary to be determined, including $T_{\ast }$ = 44 kK, $\log L/{\rm L}_{\odot }$ = 6.2, and $\log \dot{M}/{\rm M}_{\odot }$ yr^–1 = $-5.0$. Its dynamical mass agrees closely with $109 \, {\rm M}_{\odot }$ obtained from the mass-luminosity relation of very massive stars.