The Discovery of a Rare WO-type Wolf-Rayet Star in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

While observing OB stars within the most crowded regions of the Large Magellanic Cloud, we happened upon a new Wolf-Rayet star in Lucke-Hodge 41, the rich OB association that contains S Doradus and numerous other massive stars. At first glance the spectrum resembled that of a WC4 star, but closer examination showed strong OVI 3811, 34 lines, leading us to classify it as a WO4. This is only the second known WO in the LMC, and the first known WO4 (the other being a WO3). This rarity is to be expected due to these stars' short lifespans as they represent the most advanced evolutionary stage in a massive star's lifetime before exploding as SNe. This discovery shows that while the majority of WRs within the LMC have been discovered, there may be a few WRs left to be found.

AJ, accepted

References in corpus (3)

• Grids of stellar models with rotation II. WR populations and supernovae/GRB progenitors at Z = 0.014
• The Wolf-Rayet Content of M31
• Emission-line stars discovered in the UKST H-alpha survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud; Part 1: Hot stars

Cited by in corpus (20)

• The Wolf-Rayet stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud: A comprehensive analysis of the WN class
• Spatial distribution of Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars and implications for the global population
• A Modern Search for Wolf-Rayet Stars in the Magellanic Clouds: First Results
• A Modern Search for Wolf-Rayet Stars in the Magellanic Clouds. IV. A Final Census
• Massive stars on the verge of exploding: the properties of oxygen sequence Wolf-Rayet stars
• Massive Stars in the Galaxies of the Local Group
• The Evolution and Physical Parameters of WN3/O3s: a New Type of Wolf-Rayet Star
• A Modern Search for Wolf-Rayet Stars in the Magellanic Clouds. II. A Second Year of Discoveries
• WO-Type Wolf-Rayet Stars: the Last Hurrah of Massive Star Evolution
• A Modern Search for Wolf-Rayet Stars in the Magellanic Clouds. III. A Third Year of Discoveries
• On the nature of WO stars: a quantitative analysis of the WO3 star DR1 in IC 1613
• Red supergiants and stellar evolution
• Evidence of Particle Acceleration in the Superbubble 30 Doradus C with NuSTAR
• Revealing the nebular properties and Wolf-Rayet population of IC10 with Gemini/GMOS
• Discovery of a new Wolf-Rayet star and a candidate star cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud with Spitzer
• Surface chemical composition of single WNh stars
• Emission-line stars in the LMC: the Armagh survey, and a metacatalogue
• The emission-line regions in the nucleus of NGC 1313 probed with GMOS-IFU: a supergiant/hypergiant candidate and a kinematically cold nucleus
• A New Class of Wolf-Rayet Stars: WN3/O3s
• The Stripped-Star Ultraviolet Magellanic Cloud Survey (SUMS): The UV Photometric Catalog and Stripped Star Candidate Selection