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Register a new userCoRoT observations of O stars: diverse origins of variability
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Six O-type stars were observed continuously by the CoRoT satellite during a 34.3-day run. The unprecedented quality of the data allows us to detect even low-amplitude stellar pulsations in some of these stars (HD 46202 and the binaries HD 46149 and Plasketts star). These cover both opacity-driven modes and solar-like stochastic oscillations, both of importance to the asteroseismological modelling of O stars. Additional effects can be seen in the CoRoT light curves, such as binarity and rotational modulation. Some of the hottest O-type stars (HD 46223, HD 46150 and HD 46966) are dominated by the presence of red-noise: we speculate that this is related to a sub-surface convection zone.
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The detection of pulsational frequencies in stellar photometry is required as input for asteroseismological modelling. The second short run (SRa02) of the CoRoT mission has provided photometric data of unprecedented quality and time-coverage for a number of O-type stars. We analyse the CoRoT data corresponding to three hot O-type stars, describing the properties of their light curves and we search for pulsational frequencies, which we then compare to theoretical model predictions. We determine the amplitude spectrum of the data, using the Lomb-Scargle and a multifrequency HMM-like technique. Frequencies are extracted by prewhitening, and their significance is evaluated under the assumption that the light curve is dominated by red noise. We search for harmonics, linear combinations and regular spacings among these frequencies. We use simulations with the same time sampling as the data as a powerful tool to judge the significance of our results. From the theoretical point of view, we use the MAD non-adiabatic pulsation code to determine the expected frequencies of excited modes. A substantial number of frequencies is listed, but none can be convincingly identified as being connected to pulsations. The amplitude spectrum is dominated by red noise. Theoretical modelling shows that all three O-type stars can have excited modes but the relation between the theoretical frequencies and the observed spectrum is not obvious. The dominant red noise component in the hot O-type stars studied here clearly points to a different origin than the pulsations seen in cooler O stars. The physical cause of this red noise is unclear, but we speculate on the possibility of sub-surface convection, granulation, or stellar wind inhomogeneities being responsible.
For 6 years the Convection, Rotation, and Planetary Transits (CoRoT) space mission has acquired photometric data from more than one hundred thousand point sources towards and directly opposite from the inner and outer regions of the Galaxy. The high temporal resolution of the CoRoT data combined with the wide time span of the observations has enabled the study of short and long time variations in unprecedented detail. From the initial sample of 2534 stars classified as M-giants in the CoRoT databasis, we selected 1428 targets that exhibit well defined variability, using visual inspection. The variability period and amplitude of C1 stars (stars having Teff < 4200 K) were computed using Lomb-Scargle and harmonic fit methods. The trends found in the V-I vs J-K color-color diagram are in agreement with standard empirical calibrations for M-giants. The sources located towards the inner regions of the Galaxy are distributed throughout the diagram while the majority of the stars towards the outer regions of the Galaxy are spread between the calibrations of M-giants and the predicted position for Carbon stars. The stars classified as supergiants follow a different sequence from the one found for giant stars. We also performed a KS test of the period and amplitude of stars towards the inner and outer regions of the Galaxy. We obtained a low probability that the two samples come from the same parent distribution. The observed behavior of the period-amplitude and period-Teff diagrams are, in general, in agreement with those found for Kepler sources and ground based photometry, with pulsation being the dominant cause responsible for the observed modulation. We also conclude that short-time variations on M-Giant stars do not exist orare very rare and the few cases we found are possibly related to biases or background stars.
Detectable radio emission occurs during almost all phases of massive star evolution. I will concentrate on the thermal and non-thermal continuum emission from early-type stars. The thermal radio emission is due to free-free interactions in the ionized stellar wind material. Early ideas that this would lead to an easy and straightforward way of measuring the mass-loss rates were thwarted by the presence of clumping in the stellar wind. Multi-wavelength observations provide important constraints on this clumping, but do not allow its full determination. Non-thermal radio emission is associated with binarity. This conclusion was already known for some time for Wolf-Rayet stars and in recent years it has become clear that it is also true for O-type stars. In a massive-star binary, the two stellar winds collide and around the shocks a fraction of the electrons are accelerated to relativistic speeds. Spiralling in the magnetic field these electrons emit synchrotron radiation, which we detect as non-thermal radio emission. The many parameters that influence the resulting non-thermal radio fluxes make the modelling of these systems particularly challenging, but their study will provide interesting new insight into massive stars.
The analysis of the light curves of 48 B-type stars observed by Kepler is presented. Among these are 15 pulsating stars, all of which show low frequencies characteristic of SPB stars. Seven of these stars also show a few weak, isolated high frequencies and they could be considered as SPB/beta Cep hybrids. In all cases the frequency spectra are quite different from what is seen from ground-based observations. We suggest that this is because most of the low frequencies are modes of high degree which are predicted to be unstable in models of mid-B stars. We find that there are non-pulsating stars within the beta Cep and SPB instability strips. Apart from the pulsating stars, we can identify stars with frequency groupings similar to what is seen in Be stars but which are not Be stars. The origin of the groupings is not clear, but may be related to rotation. We find periodic variations in other stars which we attribute to proximity effects in binary systems or possibly rotational modulation. We find no evidence for pulsating stars between the cool edge of the SPB and the hot edge of the delta Sct instability strips. None of the stars show the broad features which can be attributed to stochastically-excited modes as recently proposed. Among our sample of B stars are two chemically peculiar stars, one of which is a HgMn star showing rotational modulation in the light curve.
It is not known whether the original carriers of Earths nitrogen were molecular ices or refractory dust. To investigate this question, we have used data and results of Herschel observations towards two protostellar sources: the high-mass hot core of Orion KL, and the low-mass protostar IRAS 16293-2422. Towards Orion KL, our analysis of the molecular inventory of Crockett et al. (2014) indicates that HCN is the organic molecule that contains by far the most nitrogen, carrying $74_{-9}^{+5}%$ of nitrogen-in-organics. Following this evidence, we explore HCN towards IRAS 16293-2422, which we consider a solar analog. Towards IRAS 16293-2422, we have reduced and analyzed Herschel spectra of HCN, and fit these observations against jump abundance models of IRAS 16293-2422s protostellar envelope. We find an inner-envelope HCN abundance $X_{textrm{in}} = 5.9pm0.7 times 10^{-8}$ and an outer-envelope HCN abundance $X_{textrm{out}} = 1.3 pm 0.1 times 10^{-9}$. We also find the sublimation temperature of HCN to be $T_{textrm{jump}} = 71 pm 3$~K; this measured $T_{textrm{jump}}$ enables us to predict an HCN binding energy $E_{textrm{B}}/k = 3840 pm 140$~K. Based on a comparison of the HCN/H2O ratio in these protostars to N/H2O ratios in comets, we find that HCN (and, by extension, other organics) in these protostars is incapable of providing the total bulk N/H2O in comets. We suggest that refractory dust, not molecular ices, was the bulk provider of nitrogen to comets. However, interstellar dust is not known to have 15N enrichment, while high 15N enrichment is seen in both nitrogen-bearing ices and in cometary nitrogen. This may indicate that these 15N-enriched ices were an important contributor to the nitrogen in planetesimals and likely to the Earth.
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