WR Stars In Galaxies Research Articles

A large Wolf-Rayet population in NGC 300 uncovered by VLT-FORS2

We have detected 58 Wolf-Rayet candidates in the central region of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 300, based on deep VLT-FORS2 narrow-band imaging. Our survey is close to complete except for heavily reddened WR stars. Of the objects in our list, 16 stars were already spectroscopically confirmed as WR stars by Schild & Testor and Breysacher et al., to which 4 stars are added using low resolution FORS2 datasets. The WR population of NGC 300 now totals 60, a threefold increase over previous surveys, with WC/WN > 1/3, in reasonable agreement with Local Group galaxies for a moderately sub-solar metallicity. We also discuss the WR surface density in the central region of NGC 300. Finally, analyses are presented for two apparently single WC stars - #29 (alias WR3, WC5) and #48 (alias WR13, WC4) located close to the nucleus, and at a deprojected radius of 2.5 kpc, respectively. These are among the first models of WR stars in galaxies beyond the Local Group, and are compared with early WC stars in our Galaxy and LMC.

Wolf-Rayet galaxies: the past is prologue

Wolf-Rayet galaxies are those starburst systems in which the presence of Wolf-Rayet stars is inferred from the appearance of broad emission lines, notably λ4686 HeII. The ages of the bursts are only a few Myr when WR stars are present. Many (all?) of these starburst galaxies are interacting or merging systems. This talk will review the methods used to estimate the hot star populations in these galaxies, with emphasis on optical spectrophotometry. It will be important to keep in mind that the discovery of WR stars in starburst galaxies is highly dependent on spectral resolution, signal to noise, and the local properties of the object since one is searching for broad but weak emission lines superimposed upon a galaxy continuum. A brief comparison of the inferred numbers of O-type and WR stars in a galaxy, compared to the predictions of the most recent burst models, reveals good agreement in most cases. The exceptions might be understood in terms of geometric dilution (i.e., the stars and the ionized nebular gas are not co-spatial).

Metallicity Effects in Massive Star Evolution and Number Frequencies of WR Stars in Galaxies

The results of new grids of models of massive stars with metallicities Z = 0.002, 0.005, 0.020 and 0.040 and mass loss rates depending on Z are shown. When integrated over the mass spectrum, the models enable us to predict number ratios, such as WR/O, WC/WN, WNE/WR, WNL/WR, WCE/WR, WCL/WR, WO/WR as a function of Z in galaxies.Comparisons between models and observations in galaxies are made and show, as was suggested by Maeder, Lequeux and Azzopardi (1980), that the effects of metallicity on the mass loss rates are the prime agent responsible for the different distributions of massive stars in galaxies.

Massive Stars: Evolution with Mass Loss. III. Low Metal Stars, and WR's in SMC

In this paper we investigate the effect of mass loss by stellar wind on the evolution from the main sequence to the He exhaustion stage of stars in the range of mass 20 to 100 M⊙ with low metal abundance. To this purpose we compute the set of evolutionary sequences with initial mass 20, 30, 40, 60, 80, and 100 M⊙ and chemical composition parameters X=0.700, Z=0.001. The models are first computed at constant mass to provide the fundamental network to which we compare the mass losing models. This choice of the initial chemical composition is aimed to represent the case of luminous supergiants in the Small Magellanic Cloud. The rate of mass loss follows the formulation of Castor, Abbot and Klein (1975), but it incorporates the effect of different metal content in the regions of high effective temperatures in the HR diagram. The rate of mass loss for models at low effective temperature is given by the acoustic flux mechanism according to the formulation of Chiosi, Nasi and Sreenivasan (1978). The results are compared with those of Chiosi, Nasi and Sreenivasan (1978), and those of Chiosi, Nasi and Bertelli (1979) for normal metal abundance supergiant stars of the Galaxy. On the basis of the present results we suggest an interpretative scenario for the existence of single WR stars in galaxies of different chemical composition. These results allow us to interpret also the different percentages of WR's among subclasses that are observed in the Galaxy, LMC, and SMC (Conti and Vanbeveren, 1979).