Discovery of Blue Supergiants Near the Galactic Center via Hard X-ray Emission and Paschen-alpha Excess

Details Discovery of Blue Supergiants Near the Galactic Center via Hard X-ray Emission and Paschen-alpha Excess Discovery of Blue Supergiants Near the Galactic Center via Hard X-ray Emission and Paschen-alpha Excess

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21320404m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #204.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.266

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We have identified several dozen, new emission-line stars in the Galactic center region using NIR spectroscopy. The sources were selected either for their hard X-ray counterparts, as measured with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, or for their narrow-band Paschen-alpha excess detected with HST/NICMOS. The confirmed stars span a wide range of massive-star evolutionary stages, including OIa, Of, Ofpe, LBV, WNh, WN, WNE, WC, and WCd. We have determined that only 1% of the 6,000 absorbed X-ray sources near the Galactic center have NIR counterparts with K<15 mag. We suspect that the hard X-ray-emitting, massive stars we have identified are colliding-wind binaries. The majority of the confirmed massive stars have no obvious association with stellar clusters, but some may have been ejected or tidally stripped from clusters. A crude extrapolation of their numbers suggests the existence of a massive-star population, comparable in size to that contained within the known clusters, which would explain the integrated far-IR and thermal-radio luminosity emerging from the central half-kiloparsec. This additional massive-star population may have been supplemented by the tidal disruption of stellar clusters, or suggests an alternate mode of isolated massive star formation operating in the Galactic center region.

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