Hot Stars in the Quintuplet

Donald F. Figer, Mark Morris, and Ian S. McLean

(1) Division of Astronomy, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095

Paper: to appear in the 4th ESO/CTIO Workshop on the Galactic Center Proceedings

Weblink: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~figer/papers.html


Abstract:

We present K-band spectra of newly identified hot stars in the Quintuplet cluster, as well as template spectra for 34 Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars. Five of the new stars are WR types (3 WC and 2 WN), while 14 others are OB supergiants; three of the WR stars are probably the hottest identified stars within 50 pc of the Galactic Center. The newly identified stars increase the estimated ionizing flux from this cluster by about an order of magnitude with respect to earlier estimates, to 8.2(10^49) photons s^-1, or about one third of what is required to ionize the ``Sickle'' (G0.18-0.04). In addition, we propose that the 5 original enigmatic members of the Quintuplet-proper are dusty WCL stars, similar to the dozen or so known examples in the Galaxy.


Preprints available from the authors at figer@bnkl01.astro.ucla.edu , or the raw TeX (no figures) if you click here.

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