A Survey for hot Central Stars of Planetary Nebulae I. Methods and First Results

Abstract

We present the results of initial spectrographic followup with the Very Large Telescope (UT3, Melipal) for $K_s\ge 14$ Galactic plane CIV emission-line candidates in the near-infrared (NIR). These 7 faint stars all display prominent HeI and CIV emission lines characteristic of a carbon-rich Wolf-Rayet star. They have NIR colours which are much too blue to be those of distant, classical WR stars. The magnitudes and colours are compatible with those expected for central stars of planetary nebulae, and are likely to come from massive progenitor populations, and themselves be more massive than any sample of planetary nebulae known. Our survey has identified thousands of such candidates.

9 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (9)

• Physical Properties of Wolf-Rayet Stars
• The Initial-Final Mass Relation: Direct Constraints at the Low Mass End
• Stellar Diameters and Temperatures III. Main Sequence A, F, G, & K Stars: Additional high-precision measurements and empirical relations
• Spatial distribution of Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars and implications for the global population
• Fundamental properties of nearby single early B-type stars
• A Near-Infrared Survey of the Inner Galactic Plane for Wolf-Rayet Stars III. New Methods: Faintest WR Stars
• Characterizing Wolf-Rayet Stars in the Near and Mid Infrared
• Near-infrared photometry of Galactic planetary nebulae with the VVV Survey
• A New Grid of Synthetic Spectra for the Analysis of [WC]-type Central Stars of Planetary Nebulae