The Wilson-Bappu Effect Fifty Years Later

Details The Wilson-Bappu Effect Fifty Years Later The Wilson-Bappu Effect Fifty Years Later

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006aas...209.9301m&link_type=abstract

2007 AAS/AAPT Joint Meeting, American Astronomical Society Meeting 209, #93.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, V

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Wilson and Bappu (1957 ApJ 125) published an empirical correlation between the FHWM of the emission core of the CaII K-Line at 393nm and the intrinsic luminosity among late-type dwarf, giant, and supergiant stars. Later on, Stencel (1977 ApJ 215) extended this luminosity calibrator by using so-called wing emission lines found in the wings of the H and K lines. Efforts to extend these techniques to the brightest supergiants in local group galaxies were frustrated by the limits of photographic coude spectra at the time, even on 4-meter telescopes. With the advent of CCD spectroscopy and S/N possible with 8-meter telescopes, we here explore the potential for extragalactic hypergiant star distance calibration.
Using the Paranal Observatory library of high-resolution spectra (http://www.sc.eso.org/santiago/uvespop/) obtained from the UVES instrument at an ESO Very Large Telescope, we measure the line widths of the CaII H and K lines and the wing emission lines in late type stars. By plotting the measured FWHM and absolute magnitude, we re-evaluate the Wilson-Bappu-Stencel line-width-to-luminosity correlation for the K core emission and H-K core wing emission lines. Because the H-K wing emission lines remain visible in very luminous stars cooler than F1, whereas circumstellar absorption obliterates the core emission, the wing line-width-to-luminosity correlation may be useful in estimating intrinsic luminosity for these stars.
We are grateful to Dainis Dravins for bringing our attention to the UVES altas, and for partial support from the Geise Foundation and the estate of William Herschel Womble for astronomy at the University of Denver.

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