Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21812506m&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #218, #125.06; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Massive star evolution is hard to model, owing to the complications of mass-loss, uncertainties over mixing and convection, the effects of rotation, and so on. It is generally agreed that the most massive stars spend their He-burning lives as Wolf-Rayet stars. Stars of slightly smaller masses spend most of their He-burning phase as red supergiants, after briefly passing through a yellow supergiant phase. We are interested in identifying the numbers and physical properties of these stars throughout the star-forming galaxies of the Local Group in an effort to test stellar evolutionary models at varying metallicities. However, foreground contamination by Milky Way dwarfs is severe for both the yellow supergiants (YSGs) and red supergiants (RSGs). Using the photometry of the Local Group Galaxy Survey, we have used two-color information (B-V vs V-R) to separate likely foreground dwarfs from bona fide RSGs in M33, and obtained radial velocities with Hectospec on the 6.5-m MMT. The radial velocities refine the rotation curves of previous studies, and demonstrate that the rotation curve is quite flat. With the new velocity data we then separate the yellow supergiant population from the foreground using radial velocities as well. Since the number of Wolf-Rayet stars is now known to a few percent in M33 (Neugent et al. 2011, ApJ, in press, as well as poster at this meeting) it is now possible to compare the numbers of RSGs, YSGs, and WRs in this nearby spiral. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation through AST-1008020.
Caldwell Nelson
Drout Maria
Massey Philip
Tokarz Susan
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