The Red Supergiants in the Supermassive Stellar Cluster Westerlund 1

• Ano de defesa: 2018
• Autor(a) principal: Arévalo, Aura de Las Estrellas Ramírez
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: aglomerado jovem supermassivo; classificação espectral; estrelas massivas; massive stars; red supergiants; spectral classification; supergigantes vermelhas; supermassive young cluster; Westerlund 1
• Link de acesso: http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/14/14131/tde-12092018-161841/

The purpose of this dissertation is to study the Red Supergiant stars (RSGs) in the supermassive young cluster Westerlund 1 through a photometric and spectral analysis. Due to its characteristics, Westerlund 1 is one of the most interesting young massive clusters in the Milky Way and has an impressive population of massive stars, with four RSGs among them. This represents a rare oportunity to study this type of stars in a cluster with well known distance and reddening. Apart from contributing to the general knowledge about RSGs, which parameters are poorly known due to their scarcity, an analysis of these four stars will contribute to solve the puzzle of the formation history of Westerlund 1. For the analysis presented here, photometric data of the four RSGs in Westerlund 1 were used, along with near infrared spectra covering the region from ~8400 Å to ~8900 Å, obtained at two different epochs with the 1.60 m telescope at Observatório do Pico dos Dias (OPD) and the Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR). Magnitudes obtained with JHK band photometry were used to calculate effective temperatures and bolometric corrections at the K band through different methods involving the color indices (V-K)_0 and (J-K)_0, in order to determine the luminosities and locate the four RSGs in a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (HRD). A spectral analysis was performed with the aim of estimating spectral types and the same stellar parameters calculated with the photomety. First, a visual comparison of the depth and strength of the main spectral features (TiO and VO bandheads, and CaT and Fe I lines) was carried out to classify the stars by spectral type. For this purpose, spectra of the four RSGs in the cluster were compared to a group of spectra from well studied reference stars, some of them also RSGs. Then, given their strong dependence on Teff, equivalent widths (EWs) of Fe I lines were measured in all the spectra available. By comparing the EWs measured on spectra of the four RSGs and the reference stars, the Teff\'s of the most similar reference stars were assigned to the RSGs in the cluster. With the Teff\'s obtained through the spectral analysis, new points were added to the initial HRD. The final objective of the present work was to estimate the initial masses and ages of the RSGs in Westerlund 1. This was accomplished by superimposing up to date evolutionary tracks and isochrones to the HRD. Masses and ages were determined for the cases with and without rotation, obtaining an average age for the RSGs of 8 Myr, thus doubling the age of the host cluster determined from the pre-main sequence (PMS). In the final part, it is presented a brief discussion about the discrepancy of the age of Westerlund 1 measured with the PMS isochrones and the age of the RSGs, as well as the uncertainties it raises regarding the formation history of the cluster.