Physics
Scientific paper
Jan 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21724207m&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #242.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Physics
Scientific paper
The relationship between mass and luminosity is poorly determined for high mass stars, with stellar atmosphere analysis often yielding lower estimates of the masses than stellar evolutionary models predict. For the hottest massive stars in the Magellanic Clouds such differences can be as much as a factor of two. This "mass discrepancy" problem has been known for 15 years. During this time the physics of both the stellar atmosphere and stellar evolutionary models has improved considerably, but the problem still remains with us. We've concluded that resolving this discrepancy requires an observational approach.
We have been determining the masses of the highest mass stars directly from Kepler's 3rd law using massive eclipsing binaries, and comparing these to what is predicted by stellar evolutionary tracks. To identify the sample, we have used four years of intensive queue observations on the SMARTS Yale and LCO Swope 1.0-m telescope. This photometry has allowed us to pick out appropriate systems, whose light-curves and periods indicate a good chance that the components are not interacting, and that the results will be representative of single stars. Follow-up spectroscopy has been carried out on the Magellan 6.5-m Baade and Clay telescopes using IMACS and MagE, respectively. We present our preliminary results here.
This work has been funded in part through the National Science Foundation (AST-0506577) and NASA (HST GO-10612).
Eastwood Kathy
Gies Douglas R.
Massey Philip
Morrell Nidia
Neugent Kathryn
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