Examinando por Autor "Castro, N."

Mostrando 1 - 5 de 5

Acceso Abierto
A comprehensive study of NGC 2345, a young open cluster with a low metallicity
(EDP Sciences, 2019-11-05) Alonso Santiago, J.; Negueruela, I.; Marco, A.; Tabernero, H.; González Fernández, C.; Castro, N.; European Southern Observatory (ESO); Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI); Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO); European Research Council (ERC); González Fernández, C. [0000-0003-2612-0118]; Tabernero, H. [0000-0002-8087-4298]; Castro, N. [0000-0003-0521-473X]; Unidad de Excelencia Científica María de Maeztu Centro de Astrobiología del Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial y CSIC, MDM-2017-0737
Context. NGC 2345 is a young open cluster that hosts seven blue and red supergiants, low metallicity, and a high fraction of Be stars, which makes it a privileged laboratory to study stellar evolution. Aims. We aim to improve the determination of the cluster parameters and study the Be phenomenon. Our objective is also to characterise the seven evolved stars found in NGC 2345 by deriving their atmospheric parameters and chemical abundances. Methods. We performed a complete analysis combining for the first time ubvy photometry with spectroscopy as well as the Gaia Data Release 2. We obtained spectra with classification purposes for 76 stars and high-resolution spectroscopy for an in-depth analysis of the blue and red evolved stars. Results. We identify a new red supergiant and 145 B-type likely members within a radius of 18.7 ± 1.2 arcmin, which implies an initial mass, Mcl ≈ 5200 M⊙. We find a distance of 2.5 ± 0.2 kpc for NGC 2345, placing it at RGC = 10.2 ± 0.2 kpc. Isochrone fitting supports an age of 56 ± 13 Ma, implying masses around 6.5 M⊙ for the supergiants. A high fraction of Be stars (≈10%) is found. From the spectral analysis we estimate an average vrad = +58.6 ± 0.5 km s−1 and a low metallicity, [Fe/H] = −0.28 ± 0.07, for the cluster. We also determine chemical abundances for Li, O, Na, Mg, Si, Ca, Ti, Ni, Rb, Y, and Ba for the evolved stars. The chemical composition of the cluster is consistent with that of the Galactic thin disc. One of the K supergiants, S50, is a Li-rich star, presenting an A(Li) ≈ 2.1. An overabundance of Ba is found, supporting the enhanced s-process. Conclusions. NGC 2345 has a low metallicity for its Galactocentric distance, which is comparable to typical Large Magellanic Cloud stars. It is massive enough to serve as a test bed for theoretical evolutionary models for massive intermediate-mass stars.
Acceso Abierto
Mapping the core of the Tarantula Nebula with VLT-MUSE II. The spectroscopic Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of OB stars in NGC 2070
(EDP Sciences, 2021-04-13) Castro, N.; Crowther, P. A.; Evans, C. J.; Vink, J. S.; Puls, J.; Herrero, A.; García, M.; Selman, F. J.; Roth, M. M.; Simón Díaz, S.; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG); Agencia Canaria de Investigación, Innovación y Sociedad de la Información (ACIISI); Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI); Castro, N. [0000-0003-0521-473X]; Vink, J. S. [0000-0002-8445-4397]
We present the spectroscopic analysis of 333 OB-type stars extracted from VLT-MUSE observations of the central 30 × 30 pc of NGC 2070 in the Tarantula Nebula on the Large Magellanic Cloud, the majority of which are analysed for the first time. The distribution of stars in the spectroscopic Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (sHRD) shows 281 stars in the main sequence. We find two groups in the main sequence, with estimated ages of 2.1 ± 0.8 and 6.2 ± 2 Myr. A subgroup of 52 stars is apparently beyond the main sequence phase, which we consider to be due to emission-type objects and/or significant nebular contamination affecting the analysis. As in previous studies, stellar masses derived from the sHRD are systematically larger than those obtained from the conventional HRD, with the differences being largest for the most massive stars. Additionally, we do not find any trend between the estimated projected rotational velocity and evolution in the sHRD. The projected rotational velocity distribution presents a tail of fast rotators that resembles findings in the wider population of 30 Doradus. We use published spectral types to calibrate the He Iλ4921/He IIλ5411 equivalent-width ratio as a classification diagnostic for early-type main sequence stars when the classical blue-visible region is not observed. Our model-atmosphere analyses demonstrate that the resulting calibration is well correlated with effective temperature.
Acceso Abierto
The IACOB project VI. On the elusive detection of massive O-type stars close to the ZAMS
(EDP Sciences, 2020-06-30) Holgado, G.; Simón Díaz, S.; Haemmerlé, L.; Lennon, D. J.; Barbá, R. H.; Cerviño, M.; Castro, N.; Herrero, A.; Meynet, G.; Arias, J. I.; Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI); Agencia Canaria de Investigación, Innovación y Sociedad de la Información (ACIISI); Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF); European Research Council (ERC); Holgado, G. [0000-0002-9296-8259]; Unidad de Excelencia Científica María de Maeztu Centro de Astrobiología del Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial y CSIC, MDM-2017-0737
Context. The apparent lack of massive O-type stars near the zero-age main sequence, or ZAMS (at ages <2 Myr), is a topic that has been widely discussed in the past 40 yr. Different explanations for the elusive detection of these young massive stars have been proposed from the observational and theoretical side, but no firm conclusions have been reached yet. Aims. We reassess this empirical result here, benefiting from the high-quality spectroscopic observations of (more than 400) Galactic O-type stars gathered by the IACOB and OWN surveys. Methods. We used effective temperatures and surface gravities resulting from a homogeneous semi-automatized IACOB-GBAT/FASTWIND spectroscopic analysis to locate our sample of stars in the Kiel and spectroscopic Hertzsprung-Russell (sHR) diagrams. We evaluated the completeness of our magnitude-limited sample of stars as well as potential observational biases affecting the compiled sample using information from the Galactic O star catalog. We discuss limitations and possible systematics of our analysis method, and compare our results with other recent studies using smaller samples of Galactic O-type stars. We mainly base our discussion on the distribution of stars in the sHR diagram in order to avoid the use of still uncertain distances to most of the stars in our sample. However, we also performed a more detailed study of the young cluster Trumpler-14 as an illustrative example of how Gaia cluster distances can help to construct the associated classical HR diagram. Results. We find that the apparent lack of massive O-type stars near the ZAMS with initial evolutionary masses in the range between ≈30 and 70 M⊙ still persist even when spectroscopic results from a large non-biased sample of stars are used. We do not find any correlation between the dearth of stars close to the ZAMS and obvious observational biases, limitations of our analysis method, and/or the use of one example spectroscopic HR diagram instead of the classical HR diagram. Finally, by investigating the effect of the efficiency of mass accretion during the formation process of massive stars, we conclude that an adjustment of the mass accretion rate towards lower values than canonically assumed might reconcile the hotter boundary of the empirical distribution of optically detected O-type stars in the spectroscopic HR diagram and the theoretical birthline for stars with masses above ≈30 M⊙. Last, we also discuss how the presence of a small sample of O2-O3.5 stars found much closer to the ZAMS than the main distribution of Galactic O-type star might be explained in the context of this scenario when the effect of nonstandard star evolution (e.g. binary interaction, mergers, and/or homogeneous evolution) is taken into account.
Acceso Abierto
The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey
(Astronomical Science, 2020-09-01) Evans, C. J.; Lennon, D.; Langer, N.; Almeida, L.; Bartlett, E.; Bastian, N.; Bestenlehner, J. M.; Britavskiy, N.; Castro, N.; Clark, S.; Crowther, P. A.; De Koter, A.; De Mink, S.; Dufton, P. L.; Fossati, L.; García, M.; Gieles, M.; Gräfener, G.; Grin, N.; Hénault Brunet, V.; Herrero, A.; Howarth, I.; Izzard, R.; Kalari, V.; Maíz Apellániz, J.; Markova, N.; Najarro, F.; Patrick, Lee R.; Puls, J.; Ramírez Agudelo, O.; Renzo, M.; Sabín Sanjulián, C.; Sana, H.; Schneider, F.; Schootemeijer, A.; Simón Díaz, S.; Smartt, S.; Taylor, W.; Tramper, F.; Van Loon, J.; Villaseñor, J.; Vink, J. S.; Walborn, N.
The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey (VFTS) was an ESO Large Programme that has provided a rich, legacy dataset for studies of both resolved and integrated populations of massive stars. Initiated in 2008 (ESO Period 82), we used the Fibre Large Array Multi Element Spectrograph (FLAMES) to observe more than 800 massive stars in the dramatic 30 Doradus star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. At the start of the survey the importance of multiplicity among high-mass stars was becoming evident, so a key feature was multi-epoch spectroscopy to detect radial-velocity shifts arising from binary motion. Here we summarise some of the highlights from the survey and look ahead to the future of the field.
Acceso Abierto
Variability of OB stars from TESS southern Sectors 1–13 and high-resolution IACOB and OWN spectroscopy
(EDP Sciences, 2020-07-13) Burssens, S.; Simón Díaz, S.; Bowman, D. M.; Holgado, G.; Michielsen, M.; De Burgos, A.; Castro, N.; Barbá, R. H.; Aerts, C.; Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI); European Research Council (ERC); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); Holgado, G. [0000-0002-9296-8259]; Bowman, D. [0000-0001-7402-3852]; Burssens, S. [0000-0002-1593-0863]; Aerts, C. [0000-0003-1822-7126]; Unidad de Excelencia Científica María de Maeztu Centro de Astrobiología del Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial y CSIC, MDM-2017-0737
Context. The lack of high-precision long-term continuous photometric data for large samples of stars has impeded the large-scale exploration of pulsational variability in the OB star regime. As a result, the candidates for in-depth asteroseismic modelling have remained limited to a few dozen dwarfs. The TESS nominal space mission has surveyed the southern sky, including parts of the galactic plane, yielding continuous data across at least 27 d for hundreds of OB stars. Aims. We aim to couple TESS data in the southern sky with ground-based spectroscopy to study the variability in two dimensions, mass and evolution. We focus mainly on the presence of coherent pulsation modes that may or may not be present in the predicted theoretical instability domains and unravel all frequency behaviour in the amplitude spectra of the TESS data. Methods. We compose a sample of 98 OB-type stars observed by TESS in Sectors 1–13 and with available multi-epoch, high-resolution spectroscopy gathered by the IACOB and OWN surveys. We present the short-cadence 2 min light curves of dozens of OB-type stars, which have one or more spectra in the IACOB or OWN database. Based on these light curves and their Lomb–Scargle periodograms, we performed variability classification and frequency analysis. We placed the stars in the spectroscopic Hertzsprung–Russell diagram to interpret the variability in an evolutionary context. Results. We deduce the diverse origins of the mmag-level variability found in all of the 98 OB stars in the TESS data. We find among the sample several new variable stars, including three hybrid pulsators, three eclipsing binaries, high frequency modes in a Be star, and potential heat-driven pulsations in two Oe stars. Conclusions. We identify stars for which future asteroseismic modelling is possible, provided mode identification is achieved. By comparing the position of the variables to theoretical instability strips, we discuss the current shortcomings in non-adiabatic pulsation theory and the distribution of pulsators in the upper Hertzsprung–Russell diagram.