Bibcode
Herrero, A.; Puls, J.; Najarro, F.
Bibliographical reference
Astronomy and Astrophysics, v.396, p.949-966 (2002)
Advertised on:
12
2002
Journal
Citations
148
Refereed citations
123
Description
We have analyzed six OB supergiants and one giant covering spectral
types from O3 to B1 in the Galactic OB association Cyg OB2 by means of
an updated version of FASTWIND (Santolaya-Rey et al. cite{sph97}) that
includes an approximate treatment of metal line blocking and blanketing.
This large coverage in spectral type allows us to derive a new
temperature scale for Galactic O supergiants that is lower than the one
obtained by using pure H-He models, either plane-parallel and
hydrostatic or spherical with mass-loss. The lower temperatures are thus
a combined effect of line blanketing and the large mass-loss rates. In
some cases, the newly derived effective temperature is reduced by up to
8000 K. Changes are larger for earlier stars with large mass-loss rates.
As a consequence, luminosities are modified as well, which results in a
lower number of emerging ionizing photons and reduces the mass
discrepancy. Although there are still significant differences between
spectroscopic and evolutionary masses, we do not find any obvious
systematic pattern of those differences. We derive mass-loss rates and
the corresponding wind momentum-luminosity relation for the analyzed
stars. Although consistent with previous results by Puls et al.
(cite{puls96}) for Galactic stars, our relation is better defined due
to a reduction of errors related to stellar distances and points to a
possible separation between extreme Of stars (Of+,
Of*) and stars with more moderate morphologies. However this
finding is only tentative, as the statistics are still scarce. The INT
is operated in the island of La Palma by the ING in the Spanish
Observatorio de El Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de
Astrofísica de Canarias.