Highly collimated supersonic jets and winds
are observed to emerge from a wide variety of astrophysical objects.

In this seminar, I will first review the standard production mechanism of
JETS emerging from stars either in their early stages of evolution, like
protostars, or in their late stages, like X-ray binary stars hosting a
stellar-mass black hole. Although the latter objects are able to
produce much more powerful outflows, both jet classes are morphologically
very similar, suggesting a common physical origin based on the magneto-
centrifugal acceleration out off the magnetized accretion disks that
surround the central sources. I will show recent results based on
observations, numerical simulations and analytical study that support this
scenario.

Less collimated supersonic outflows are also observed to emerge from very
massive, dying hot stars, like the luminous-blue-variable stars,
being ETA-CARINAE the most massive and powerful object of this class
observed in our Galaxy. Its spectacular bipolar
winds, which emanate in the form of large  Homunculi
nebulae, help to trace the historical evolution of the embedded hidden star
system (probably a binary composed of two very massive stars with 150 solar
masses). We have performed two-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations 
that are able to produce not only the observed structure and kinematics of
the Eta-Carinae bipolar winds, but also the observed high-velocity
equatorial ejecta.
In the context of galaxies, a quite similar phenomenum occurs, e.g.,  in
STARBURST galaxies, but in a much larger scale, with the formation of
gigantic bipolar superwinds that emerge from the galactic disk at high
velocities into the intergalactic medium. These galaxies due to episodes of
intense star-formation in their central regions present high rate of
supernova (SN) explosions which energize the gas within the galaxy that then
can generate a superwind. The effectiveness of this process depends on the
heating efficiency (HE) of the SNs, i.e. on the fraction of the
SNs explosion energy that is effectively stored in the ISM gas in the form
of kinetic or internal energy and is not radiated away. In recent work, we
have shown that HE can remain very small during the first half of the SB
lifetime. During this period, no super galactic wind  develops,
and the cooled gas remains confined  to the system and can promote new
generations of star-formation, or increase the gas infall to the central
regions of the SB. As the process above ceases to be dominant, the
gas heats and expands very rapidly and finally leaves the galaxy as a
superwind.