The Araucaria Project: the Local Group Galaxy WLM--Distance and metallicity from quantitative spectroscopy of blue Supergiants

Abstract

The quantitative analysis of low resolution spectra of A and B supergiants is used to determine a distance modulus of 24.99 +/- 0.10 mag (995 +/- 46 Kpc) to the Local Group galaxy WLM. The analysis yields stellar effective temperatures and gravities, which provide a distance through the Flux weighted Gravity--Luminosity Relationship (FGLR). Our distance is 0.07 mag larger than the most recent results based on Cepheids and the tip of the RGB. This difference is within the 1-sigma overlap of the typical uncertainties quoted in these photometric investigations. In addition, non-LTE spectral synthesis of the rich metal line spectra (mostly iron, chromium and titanium) of the A supergiants is carried out, which allows the determination of stellar metallicities. An average metallicity of -0.87 +/- 0.06 dex with respect to solar metallicity is found.

46 pages, 14 figures (2 low resolution color figures). Accepted for publication by ApJ

References in corpus (5)

• The VLT-FLAMES survey of massive stars: atmospheric parameters and rotational velocity distributions for B-type stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• Quantitative Spectroscopy of 24 A supergiants in the Sculptor galaxy NGC 300: Flux weighted gravity luminosity relationship, metallicity and metallicity gradient
• The Araucaria Project. VLT spectra of blue supergiants in WLM: classification and first abundances
• A High-Resolution Study of the HI Content of Local Group Dwarf Irregular Galaxy WLM
• The Araucaria Project. The Distance to the Local Group Galaxy WLM from Cepheid Variables discovered in a Wide-Field Imaging Survey

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