Environments of massive stars and the upper mass limit

Abstract

The locations of massive stars (> 8 Msun) within their host galaxies is reviewed. These range from distributed OB associations to dense star clusters within giant HII regions. A comparison between massive stars and the environments of core-collapse supernovae and long duration Gamma Ray Bursts is made, both at low and high redshift. We also address the question of the upper stellar mass limit, since very massive stars (VMS, Minit >> 100 Msun) may produce exceptionally bright core-collapse supernovae or pair instability supernovae.

arXiv comment9 pages, 2 figures, review paper from IAU Symposium 279: Death of Massive Stars: SNe and GRBs (P. Roming, N. Kawai & E. Pian, eds.)

References in corpus (29)

• Star Formation in Galaxies Along the Hubble Sequence
• Embedded Clusters in Molecular Clouds
• The Nucleosynthetic Signature of Population III
• The Spitzer c2d Legacy Results: Star Formation Rates and Efficiencies; Evolution and Lifetimes
• A Hipparcos census of the nearby OB associations
• Progenitors of core-collapse supernovae
• Physical Properties of Wolf-Rayet Stars
• The Calibration of Mid-Infrared Star Formation Rate Indicators
• Long gamma-ray bursts and core-collapse supernovae have different environments
• The R136 star cluster hosts several stars whose individual masses greatly exceed the accepted 150 Msun stellar mass limit
• Comparison of H-alpha and UV Star Formation Rates in the Local Volume: Systematic Discrepancies for Dwarf Galaxies
• Observed Fractions of Core-Collapse Supernova Types and Initial Masses of their Single and Binary Progenitor Stars
• Supernova 2007bi as a pair-instability explosion
• The maximum stellar mass, star-cluster formation and composite stellar populations
• An upper limit to the masses of stars
• Long Gamma-Ray Bursts and Type Ic Core Collapse Supernovae Have Similar Locations in Hosts
• The Initial Mass Function of the Massive Star-forming Region NGC 3603 from Near-Infrared Adaptive Optics observations
• Dwarf Galaxy Starburst Statistics in the Local Volume
• Converting H$\alpha$ Luminosities into Star Formation Rates
• Compact Star Clusters in Nearby Dwarf Irregular Galaxies
• Constraints on Type Ib/c and GRB Progenitors
• The Star Clusters in the Starburst Irregular Galaxy NGC 1569
• The early evolution of the star cluster mass function
• The very massive binary NGC3603-A1
• The Wolf-Rayet Content of M33
• A Method for Measuring Variations in the Stellar Initial Mass Function
• VLT/SINFONI time-resolved spectroscopy of the central, luminous, H-rich WN stars of R136
• The most massive core collapse supernova progenitors
• The Wolf-Rayet population of the nearby barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068 uncovered by VLT and Gemini

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Instabilities in the Envelopes and Winds of Very Massive Stars