4.7 Article

An O2If*star found in isolation in the backyard of NGC 3603

Journal

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 435, Issue 1, Pages L73-L77

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slt100

Keywords

stars: individual: HD 93129A; stars: individual: MTT 68; stars: Wolf-Rayet; open clusters and associations: individual: NGC 3603

Funding

  1. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  2. National Science Foundation
  3. Diretoria de Investigacion-Universidad de La Serena [DIULS REGULAR PR13144]

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In this Letter, we communicate the identification of a new Galactic O2If* star (MTT68) isolated at a projected linear distance of 3 pc from the centre of the starburst cluster NGC 3603. From its optical photometry, I computed a bolometric luminosity M-Bol = -10.7, which corresponds to a total stellar luminosity of 1.5 x 10(6) L-circle dot. It was found to be an interesting similarity between MTT 68 and the well-known multiple system HD 93129. From Hubble Space Telescope (HST) F656N images of the NGC 3603 field, it was found that MTT 68 is actually a visual binary system with an angular separation of 0.38 arcsec, which corresponds to a projected (minimum) linear distance of r(A-B) = 1.4 x 10(-2) pc. This value is similar to that for the HD93129A (O2If*) and HD 93129B (O3.5) pair, r(A-B) = 3.0 x 10(-2) pc. On the other hand, HD 93129A has a third closer companion named HD 93129Ab (O3.5) at only 0.053 arcsec, and taking into account that the X-ray to total stellar luminosity ratio for the MTT 68 system (L-X/L-Bol similar to 1 x 10(-5)) is about two orders of magnitude above the canonical value expected for single stars, I suspect that the MTT 68 system probably hosts another massive companion possibly to close to be properly resolved by the HST archive images.

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