A study of the luminous blue variable candidate He 3-519 and its surrounding nebula

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Blue Stars, Stellar Envelopes, Stellar Spectra, Ultraviolet Astronomy, Variable Stars, Visible Spectrum, Wolf-Rayet Stars, Emission Spectra, Helium, Hydrogen, Iron, Line Spectra, Nitrogen, Silicon, Stellar Atmospheres, Stellar Color, Stellar Models, Stellar Winds

Scientific paper

He 3-519 is 20 min away from the well-known Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) AG Car and is surrounded by a ring nebula 1 min diameter. In this paper, we present the first detailed study of He 3-519 and its surrounding nebula based on high resolution spectra obtained at the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) with the University College London (UCL) echelle spectrograph for several epochs. The optical spectrum of He 3-519 is dominated by H I, He I and N II P Cygni profiles and contains weak He II lambda 4686 emission. The Short Wavelength Prime (SWP) IUE spectrum consists mainly of Fe II absorption plus a Si IV lambda 1400 stellar wind feature. Two strong emission lines possibly due to Fe II and Fe III are present in the Long Wavelength Prime (LWP) spectrum. We find that dramatic optical line profile variability is present in our spectra and comparison with earlier epochs back to 1989 shows that the Balmer P Cygni absorption components disappear and reappear over timescales of weeks. We compare the spectral characteristics of He 3-519 with those of related stars and find that they are most similar to AG Car at, and just after, minimum. We further find that He 3-519 and AG Car at minimum have spectral features that are not consistent with a Ofpe/WN9 spectral type. We instead assign a new spectral class of WN11 to these two stars. The overall properties of He 3-519 and its nebula lead us to conclude that it should be considered as a new LBV. Moreover, the evolved status of both He 3-519 and AG Car indicate that they should properly be considered as cool WN11 stars i.e. they are WR stars which are members of the LBV class because of their proximity to the upper luminosity boundary in the HR diagram. Similarly, their nebulae should be considered as examples of WR ring nebulae.

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