The spectroscopic Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of Galactic massive stars

Castro, N.; Fossati, L.; Langer, N.; Simón-Díaz, S.; Schneider, F. R. N.; Izzard, R. G.
Bibliographical reference

Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 570, id.L13, 5 pp.

Advertised on:
10
2014
Number of authors
6
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
108
Refereed citations
93
Description
The distribution of stars in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram narrates their evolutionary history and directly assesses their properties. Placing stars in this diagram however requires the knowledge of their distances and interstellar extinctions, which are often poorly known for Galactic stars. The spectroscopic Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (sHRD) tells similar evolutionary tales, but is independent of distance and extinction measurements. Based on spectroscopically derived effective temperatures and gravities of almost 600 stars, we derive for the first time the observational distribution of Galactic massive stars in the sHRD. While biases and statistical limitations in the data prevent detailed quantitative conclusions at this time, we see several clear qualitative trends. By comparing the observational sHRD with different state-of-the-art stellar evolutionary predictions, we conclude that convective core overshooting may be mass-dependent and, at high mass (≳15 M⊙), stronger than previously thought. Furthermore, we find evidence for an empirical upper limit in the sHRD for stars with Teff between 10 000 and 32 000 K and, a strikingly large number of objects below this line. This over-density may be due to inflation expanding envelopes in massive main-sequence stars near the Eddington limit. Appendix A is available in electronic form at http://www.aanda.org
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The IACOB project: A new Era in the Study of Galactic OB Stars
IACOB is an ambitious long-term project whose main scientific goal is to provide an unprecedented empirical overview of the main physical properties of Galactic massive O- and B-type stars which can be used as definitive anchor point for our theories of stellar atmospheres, winds, interiors and evolution of massive stars
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