Resolving the core of R136 in the optical

Abstract

The sharpest optical images of the R136 cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud are presented, allowing for the first time to resolve members of the central core, including R136a1, the most massive star known. These data were taken using the Gemini speckle imager Zorro in medium-band filters with effective wavelengths similar to BVRI achieving angular resolutions between 30-40 mas. All stars previously known in the literature, having $V<$16 mag within the central $2^{\prime \prime }\times 2^{\prime \prime }$ were recovered. Visual companions ($\ge$40 mas; 2000 au) were detected for the WN5h stars R136 a1, and a3. Photometry of the visual companion of a1 suggests it is of mid O spectral type. Based on new photometric luminosities using the resolved Zorro imaging, the masses of the individual WN5h stars are estimated to be between 150-200 $M_{\odot }$, lowering significantly the present-day masses of some of the most massive stars known. These mass estimates are critical anchor points for establishing the stellar upper-mass function.

Accepted for publication in ApJ; 14 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables

References in corpus (12)

• Pre-Supernova Evolution of Massive Single and Binary Stars
• A distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud that is precise to one per cent
• The R136 star cluster hosts several stars whose individual masses greatly exceed the accepted 150 Msun stellar mass limit
• An excess of massive stars in the local 30 Doradus starburst
• BONNSAI: a Bayesian tool for comparing stars with stellar evolution models
• The evolution of rotating very massive stars with LMC composition
• The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey XVI. The optical+NIR extinction laws in 30 Doradus and the photometric determination of the effective temperatures of OB stars
• The R136 star cluster dissected with Hubble Space Telescope/STIS. II. Physical properties of the most massive stars in R136
• A pilot survey of the binarity of Massive Young Stellar Objects with $K$ band adaptive optics
• Pillars of creation amongst destruction: Star formation in molecular clouds near R136 in 30 Doradus
• High contrast and resolution near infrared photometry of the core of R136
• Mapping the youngest and most massive stars in the Tarantula nebula with MUSE-NFM

Cited by in corpus (23)

• The most massive stars in very young star clusters with a limited mass: Evidence favours significant self-regulation in the star formation processes
• Very massive stars and Nitrogen emitting galaxies
• Very Massive Stars and Pair-Instability Supernovae: Mass-loss Framework for low Metallicity
• Observable and ionizing properties of star-forming galaxies with very massive stars and different IMFs
• Inferring the presence of very massive stars in local star-forming regions
• Evidence for Very Massive Stars in extremely UV-bright star-forming galaxies at $z\sim 2.2-3.6$
• Extreme broad He\2 emission at high and low redshifts: the dominant role of VMS in NGC 3125-A1 and CDFS131717
• Investigating episodic mass loss in evolved massive stars: I. Spectroscopy of dusty massive stars in ten southern galaxies
• Constraints on the multiplicity of the most massive stars known: R136 a1, a2, a3, and c
• The hydrogen clock to infer the upper stellar mass
• pySTARBURST99: The Next Generation of STARBURST99
• An Eternal gravitational collapse in $f(R)$ theory of gravity and their astrophysical implications
• Turbulence in compact to giant H II regions
• Black hole formation in gravitational collapse and their astrophysical implications
• Black Strings and String Clouds Embedded in Anisotropic Quintessence: Solutions for Scalar Particles and Implications
• Very massive stars at low metallicity: evolution, synthetic spectroscopy, and impact on the integrated light of starbursts
• Following the tidal trail: a history of modeling the Magellanic Stream
• Extinction towards the cluster R136 in the Large Magellanic Cloud: An extinction law from the near-infrared to the ultraviolet
• Evolutionary models for the Very Massive Stars in the R136 cluster of 30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Astrophysical implications of an eternal homogeneous gravitational collapse model with a parametrization of expansion scalar
• Eternal homogeneous gravitational collapse: A comprehensive analysis from $\Theta$ parametrization
• A pilot method to determine the high mass end of the Stellar Initial Mass Function in galaxies using UVIT, H$\alpha$-MUSE observations and applied to NGC628
• VLTI observations of the Orion Belt stars: I. eps Orionis