Pismis 24-1: The Stellar Upper Mass Limit Preserved


J. Maíz Apellániz, Nolan R. Walborn, N. I. Morrell, V. S. Niemela, and E. P. Nelan

IAA-CSIC, STScI, LCO, UNLP, and STScI

Is there a stellar upper mass limit? Recent statistical work seems to indicate that there is and that it is in the vicinity of 150 solar masses. In this paper we use HST and ground-based data to investigate the brightest members of the cluster Pismis 24, which was previously inferred to have a mass greater than 200 solar masses, in apparent disagreement with that limit. We determine that Pismis 24-1 is composed of at least three objects, the resolved Pismis 24-1SW and the unresolved spectroscopic binary Pismis 24-1NE. The evolutionary zero-age masses of those two objects and that of the nearby Pismis 24-17 are all approximately 100 solar masses, very large but under the stellar upper mass limit.

Reference: Submitted to ApJ
Status: Manuscript has been submitted

Weblink: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0612012

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Email: jmaiz@iaa.es