Herschel/HIFI View on Massive Evolved Stars: the HIFISTARS sample of Supergiant and Yellow Hypergiant envelopes

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We present the first results of one the HIFISTARS (Bujarrabal et al. 2010, see also Decin et al., this conference) sub-programmes dedicated to the study of the physico-chemical conditions and the mass-loss history in Red Supergiants and Yellow Hypergiants. Such sources are the most massive and luminous stars in the pathway of stellar evolution, and as such are fast-lived and characterised by very intense winds and mass-loss rates. These conditions and the large size of their envelope contribute to a particularly rich chemistry. At the end of their evolution, Super/Hyergiant stars are expected to die hard and form black holes or neutron stars after a supernova. The HIFISTARS' sample of evolved massive stars considers three Red Supergiants (NML Cyg, Betelgeuse, and VY CMa) and two Yellow Hypergiants (IRC+10420 and AFGL2343), in a handful of submm and FIR CO/13CO lines, as well as several water, HCN, SiO, SO, SO2, and other bonus lines collected over the whole HIFI frequency ranges. While most of the CO, the OH line at 1835 GHz, and both ortho- and para- ground-state water lines are detected in all targets, there is a clear difference for the less-abundant N-bearing, Si-bearing and S-bearing species. The various water lines covered by the survey are also relatively un-evenly represented from one source to another, with some of the transitions showing up as masers. The observed lines feature complex and distinct profiles, indicative of the strong and asymmetric wings at play for some of the transitions. Of the four sources observed so far (all but AFGL2343), VY CMa clearly stands out as an exceptional object, with most lines 2-10x stronger than any other Super/Hypergiants, and revealing in particular an extremely rich water chemistry observed nowhere in the other sources of the sample (Alcolea et al., in preparation, see also Menten et al., this conference).

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