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Post Info TOPIC: Wolf-Rayet star WR60a


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Wolf-Rayet star WR60a
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Title: A New Galactic Wolf-Rayet Star in Centaurus
Authors: A. Roman-Lopes

In this work I communicate the detection of a new Galactic Wolf-Rayet star (WR60a) in Centaurus. The H- and K-band spectra of WR60a, show strong carbon near-infrared emission lines, characteristic of Wolf-Rayet stars of the WC5-7 sub-type. Adopting mean absolute magnitude M_K and mean intrinsic (J-K_S) and (H-K_S) colours, it was found that WR60a suffer a mean visual extinction of 3.8 ±1.3 magnitudes, being located at a probable heliocentric distance of 5.2 ±0.8 Kpc, which for the related Galactic longitude (l=312) puts this star probably in the Carina-Sagittarius arm at about 5.9 kpc from the Galactic center. I searched for clusters in the vicinity of WR60a, and in principle found no previously known clusters in a search radius region of several tens arc-minutes. The detection of a well isolated WR star induced us to seek for some still unknown cluster, somewhere in the vicinity of WR60a. From inspection of 5.8 \mu m and 8.0 \mu m Spitzer/IRAC GLIMPSE images of the region around the new WR star, it was found strong mid-infrared extended emission at about 13.5 arcmin south-west of WR60a. The study of the the H-K_S colour distribution of point sources associated with the extended emission, reveals the presence of a new Galactic cluster candidate probably formed by at least 85 stars.

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