An official website of the United States government
Abstract Stars with initial masses larger than 8M⊙undergo substantial mass loss through mechanisms that remain elusive. Unraveling the origins of this mass loss is important for comprehending the evolutionary path of these stars, the type of supernova explosion, and whether they become neutron stars or black hole remnants. In 2022 December, RW Cep experienced the Great Dimming in its visible brightness, presenting a unique opportunity to understand mass-loss mechanisms. Our previous observations of RW Cep from the CHARA Array, taken during the dimming phase, show a compelling asymmetry in the star images, with a darker zone on the west side of the star indicating the presence of dust in front of the star in our line of sight. Here, we present multiepoch observations from CHARA while the star rebrightened in 2023. We created images using three image reconstruction methods and an analytical model fit. Comparisons of images acquired during the dimming and rebrightening phases reveal remarkable differences. Specifically, the west side of RW Cep, initially obscured during the dimming phase, reappeared during the subsequent rebrightening phase, and the measured angular diameter became larger by 8%. We also observed image changes from epoch to epoch while the star is brightening, indicating the time evolution of dust in front of the star. We suggest that the dimming of RW Cep was a result of a recent surface mass ejection event, generating a dust cloud that partially obstructed the stellar photosphere.
more »
« less
The Great Dimming of the Hypergiant Star RW Cephei: CHARA Array Images and Spectral Analysis
Abstract The cool hypergiant star RW Cephei is currently in a deep photometric minimum that began several years ago. This event bears a strong similarity to the Great Dimming of the red supergiant Betelgeuse that occurred in 2019–2020. We present the first resolved images of RW Cephei that we obtained with the CHARA Array interferometer. The angular diameter and Gaia distance estimates indicate a stellar radius of 900–1760R⊙, which makes RW Cephei one of the largest stars known in the Milky Way. The reconstructed, near-infrared images show a striking asymmetry in the disk illumination with a bright patch offset from the center and a darker zone to the west. The imaging results depend on assumptions made about the extended flux, and we present two cases with and without allowing extended emission. We also present a recent near-infrared spectrum of RW Cep that demonstrates that the fading is much larger at visual wavelengths compared to that at near-infrared wavelengths as expected for extinction by dust. We suggest that the star’s dimming is the result of a recent surface mass ejection event that created a dust cloud that now partially blocks the stellar photosphere.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10436953
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.3847
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Astronomical Journal
- Volume:
- 166
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0004-6256
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: Article No. 78
- Size(s):
- Article No. 78
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract Galaxies that are invisible in deep optical–near-infrared imaging but detected at longer wavelengths have been the focus of several recent observational studies, with speculation that they could constitute a substantial missing population and even dominate the cosmic star formation rate density atz≳ 4. The depths now achievable with JWST at the longest wavelengths probed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), coupled with the transformative resolution at longer wavelengths, are already enabling detailed, spatially resolved characterization of sources that were invisible to HST, often known as “HST-dark” galaxies. However, until now, there has been little theoretical work to compare against. We present the first simulation-based study of this population, using highly resolved galaxies from the Feedback in Realistic Environments project, with multiwavelength images along several lines of sight forward-modeled using radiative transfer. We naturally recover a population of modeled sources that meet commonly used selection criteria (HAB> 27 mag andHAB− F444W > 2.3). These simulated HST-dark galaxies lie at high redshifts (z= 4–7), have high levels of dust attenuation (AV= 2–4), and display compact recent star formation (R1/2,4.4μm≲ 1 kpc). Orientation is very important: for all but one of the 17 simulated galaxy snapshots with HST-dark sight lines, there exist other sight lines that do not meet the criteria. This result has important implications for comparisons between observations and models that do not resolve the detailed star-dust geometry, such as semianalytic models or coarsely resolved hydrodynamical simulations. Critically, we demonstrate that HST-dark sources are not an unexpected or exotic population, but a subset of high-redshift, highly dust-attenuated sources viewed along certain lines of sight.more » « less
-
Abstract We present JWST NIRCam imaging targeting 13z ~ 3 infrared-luminous (LIR ∼ 5 × 1012L⊙) galaxies from the ALESS survey with uniquely deep, high-resolution (0 08–0 16) Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array 870μm imaging. The 2.0–4.4μm (observed frame) NIRCam imaging reveals the rest-frame near-infrared stellar emission in these submillimeter-selected galaxies at the same (sub)kiloparsec resolution as the 870μm dust continuum. The newly revealed stellar morphologies show striking similarities with the dust continuum morphologies at 870μm, with the centers and position angles agreeing for most sources, clearly illustrating that the spatial offsets reported previously between the 870μm and Hubble Space Telescope morphologies were due to strong differential dust obscuration. The F444W sizes are 78% ± 21% larger than those measured at 870μm, in contrast to recent results from hydrodynamical simulations that predict larger 870μm sizes. We report evidence for significant dust obscuration in F444W for the highest-redshift sources, emphasizing the importance of longer-wavelength MIRI imaging. The majority of the sources show evidence that they are undergoing mergers/interactions, including tidal tails/plumes—some of which are also detected at 870μm. We find a clear correlation between NIRCam colors and 870μm surface brightness on ∼1 kpc scales, indicating that the galaxies are primarily red due to dust—not stellar age—and we show that the dust structure on ∼kpc scales is broadly similar to that in nearby galaxies. Finally, we find no strong stellar bars in the rest-frame near-infrared, suggesting the extended bar-like features seen at 870μm are highly obscured and/or gas-dominated structures that are likely early precursors to significant bulge growth.more » « less
-
Abstract We present a near-infrared (NIR) candidate star cluster catalog for the central kiloparsec of M82 based on new JWST NIRCam images. We identify star cluster candidates using the F250M filter, finding 1357 star cluster candidates with stellar masses >104M⊙. Compared to previous optical catalogs, nearly all (87%) of the candidates we identify are new. The star cluster candidates have a median intrinsic cluster radius of ≈1 pc and stellar masses up to 106M⊙. By comparing the color–color diagram to dust-freeyggdrasilstellar population models, we estimate that the star cluster candidates haveAV∼ 3−24 mag, corresponding toA2.5μm∼ 0.3−2.1 mag. There is still appreciable dust extinction toward these clusters into the NIR. We measure the stellar masses of the star cluster candidates, assuming ages of 0 and 8 Myr. The slope of the resulting cluster mass function isβ= 1.9 ± 0.2, in excellent agreement with studies of star clusters in other galaxies.more » « less
-
Abstract Single flux density measurements at observed-frame submillimeter and millimeter wavelengths are commonly used to probe dust and gas masses in galaxies. In this Letter, we explore the robustness of this method to infer dust mass, focusing on quiescent galaxies, using a series of controlled experiments on four massive halos from the Feedback in Realistic Environments project. Our starting point is four star-forming central galaxies at seven redshifts betweenz= 1.5 andz= 4.5. We generate modified quiescent galaxies that have been quenched for 100 Myr, 500 Myr, or 1 Gyr prior to each of the studied redshifts by reassigning stellar ages. We derive spectral energy distributions for each fiducial and modified galaxy using radiative transfer. We demonstrate that the dust mass inferred is highly dependent on the assumed dust temperature,Tdust, which is often unconstrained observationally. Motivated by recent work on quiescent galaxies that assumedTdust∼ 25 K, we show that the ratio between dust mass and 1.3 mm flux density can be higher than inferred by up to an order of magnitude, due to the considerably lower dust temperatures seen in non-star-forming galaxies. This can lead to an underestimation of dust mass (and, when submillimeter flux density is used as a proxy for molecular gas content and gas mass). This underestimation is most severe at higher redshifts, where the observed-frame 1.3 mm flux density probes rest-frame wavelengths far from the Rayleigh–Jeans regime, and hence depends superlinearly on dust temperature. We fit relations between ratios of rest-frame far-infrared flux densities and mass-weighted dust temperature that can be used to constrain dust temperatures from observations and hence derive more reliable dust and molecular gas masses.more » « less
