Near-Infrared Counterparts to Chandra X-ray Sources Toward the Galactic Center. II. Discovery of Wolf-Rayet Stars and O Supergiants


Jon C. Mauerhan , Michael P. Muno , Mark R. Morris , Susan R. Stolovy , Angela S. Cotera

NASA Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, Caltech

We present new identifications of infrared counterparts to the population of hard X-ray sources near the Galactic center detected by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. We have confirmed 16 new massive stellar counterparts to the X-ray population, including nitrogen-type (WN) and carbon-type (WC) Wolf-Rayet stars, and O supergiants. For the majority of these sources, the X-ray photometry is consistent with thermal emission from plasma having temperatures in the range of kT=1-8 keV or non-thermal emission having power-law indices in the range of -1
Reference: ApJ, accepted
Status: Manuscript has been accepted

Weblink: http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.1055

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Email: mauerhan@ipac.caltech.edu