Yellow Supergiants in the Andromeda Galaxy (M31)

Abstract

The yellow supergiant content of nearby galaxies can provide a critical test of stellar evolution theory, bridging the gap between the hot, massive stars and the cool red supergiants. But, this region of the color-magnitude diagram is dominated by foreground contamination, requiring membership to somehow be determined. Fortunately, the large negative systemic velocity of M31, coupled to its high rotation rate, provides the means for separating the contaminating foreground dwarfs from the bona fide yellow supergiants within M31. Using the MMT, we obtained spectra of about 2900 stars, selected using the color and magnitude range to be yellow supergiants. Comparing the velocities to that of M31's rotation curve, we identified 54 certain, and 66 probable yellow supergiants from among the sea of foreground dwarfs. We find excellent agreement between the location of yellow supergiants in the H-R diagram and that predicted by the latest Geneva evolutionary tracks which include rotation. However, the relative number of yellow supergiants seen as a function of mass varies from that predicted by the models by a factor of more than 10, in the sense that more high mass yellow supergiants are predicted than are actually observed. Comparing the total number of yellow supergiants with masses above 20Mo with the estimated number of unevolved O stars indicates that the duration of the yellow supergiant phase is about 3000 years. This is consistent with what the 12Mo and 15Mo evolutionary tracks predict, but disagrees with the 20,000-80,000 year time scales predicted by the models for higher masses.

Accepted by the Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (7)

• A Survey of Local Group Galaxies Currently Forming Stars. I. UBVRI Photometry of Stars in M31 and M33
• A Survey of Local Group Galaxies Currently Forming Stars: III. A Search for Luminous Blue Variables and Other H-alpha Emission-Lined Stars
• Star Clusters in M31: I. A Catalog and a Study of the Young Clusters
• A New Method for Isolating M31 Red Giant Stars: The Discovery of Stars out to a Radial Distance of 165 Kiloparsecs
• An updated survey of globular clusters in M31. II Newly discovered bright and remote clusters
• Red Supergiants in the Andromeda Galaxy (M31)
• A Census of Massive Stars Across the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram of Nearby Galaxies: What We Know and What We Don't

Cited by in corpus (63)

• The First Data Release (DR1) of the LAMOST general survey
• The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury
• The Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038/4039) Revisited: ACS and NICMOS Observations of a Prototypical Merger
• Type Ib and IIb supernova progenitors in interacting binary systems
• The LAMOST Stellar Parameter Pipeline at Peking University --- LSP3
• The expansion of stripped-envelope stars: consequences for supernovae and gravitational-wave progenitors
• Panchromatic Observations of SN 2011dh Point to a Compact Progenitor Star
• Constraining mixing in massive stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Yellow and Red Supergiants in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• On the nature of the galactic early-B hypergiants
• Radiation-Hydrodynamic Models of the evolving Circumstellar Medium around Massive Stars
• Red Supergiants in the Andromeda Galaxy (M31)
• The Yellow and Red Supergiants of M33
• Massive donors in interacting binaries: effect of metallicity
• Yellow Supergiants in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC): Putting Current Evolutionary Theory to the Test
• On the Social Traits of Luminous Blue Variables
• The Wolf-Rayet Content of M33
• A remarkable Ruby: Absorption in dense gas, rather than evolved stars, drives the extreme Balmer break of a Little Red Dot at $z=3.5$
• Luminous and Variable Stars in M31 and M33. I. The Warm Hypergiants and Post-Red Supergiant Evolution
• EVLA Observations of the Radio Evolution of SN 2011dh
• A Spectroscopic Survey of Massive Stars in M31 and M33
• A serendipitous survey for variability amongst the massive stellar population of Westerlund 1
• Luminous and Variable Stars in M31 and M33. II. Luminous Blue Variables, Candidate LBVs, Fe II Emission Line Stars, and Other Supergiants
• New Ultraviolet Extinction Curves for Interstellar Dust in M31
• On the nature of candidate luminous blue variables in M33
• Fitting formulae for evolution tracks of massive stars under extreme metal poor environments for population synthesis calculations and star cluster simulations
• Spectral Types of Red Supergiants in NGC 6822 and the Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte Galaxy
• Luminous and Variable Stars in M31 and M33. III. The Yellow and Red Supergiants and Post-Red Supergiant Evolution
• Evolutionary models of red supergiants: Evidence for a metallicity-dependent mixing length and implications for Type IIP supernova progenitors
• Massive Stars in the Galaxies of the Local Group
• The Red Supergiant Content of M31
• The Red Supergiant Content of M31 and M33
• The Luminosity Function of Red Supergiants in M31
• The Close Binary Frequency of Wolf-Rayet Stars as a Function of Metallicity in M31 and M33
• Shedding Light on the Isolation of Luminous Blue Variables
• The Time-Averaged Mass-Loss Rates of Red Supergiants As Revealed by their Luminosity Functions in M31 and M33
• Do Wolf-Rayet stars have similar locations in hosts as type Ib/c supernovae and long gamma-ray bursts?
• The isolation of Luminous Blue Variables: On subdividing the sample
• Accurate luminosities from the oxygen 7771-4 A triplet and the fundamental parameters of F-G supergiants
• Deep Hubble Space Telescope Observations of GW170817: Complete Light Curves and the Properties of the Galaxy Merger of NGC 4993
• Superadiabaticity and the metallicity independence of the Humphreys-Davidson limit
• Evolution of the progenitors of SNe 1993J and 2011dh revealed through late time radio and X-ray studies
• A spectroscopic study of blue supergiant stars in Local Group spiral galaxies: Andromeda and Triangulum
• A machine-learning photometric classifier for massive stars in nearby galaxies I. The method
• Astronomical Spectroscopy
• Detection of the Red Supergiant Wind from the Progenitor of Cassiopeia A
• Red Supergiants, Yellow Hypergiants, and Post-RSG Evolution
• Detection of Pristine Circumstellar Material of the Cassiopeia A Supernova
• A Runaway Red Supergiant in M31
• The Evolution of Massive Stars: Bridging the Gap in the Local Group
• Searching for the Next Galactic Luminous Red Nova
• The Discovery of QSOs Behind M31 and M33
• A New Luminous blue variable in the outskirt of the Andromeda Galaxy
• Stagnant Shells in the Vicinity of the Dusty Wolf-Rayet-OB Binary WR 112
• Type IIP Supernova Progenitors III: Blue to Red Supergiant Ratio in Low Metallicity Models with Convective Overshoot
• Radio evolution of a Type IIb supernova SN 2016gkg
• A Star in the M31 Giant Stream: the Highest Negative Stellar Velocity Known
• The Complex Upper HR Diagram
• CXO J004318.8+412016, a steady supersoft X-ray source in M 31
• A constant upper luminosity limit of cool supergiant stars down to the extremely low metallicity of I Zw 18
• Hertzsprung gap stars in nearby galaxies and the Quest for Luminous Red Novae Progenitors
• Revisiting the Proper Motions of M31 and M33 Using Massive Supergiant Stars with Gaia DR3
• A machine-learning photometric classifier for massive stars in nearby galaxies II. The catalog