A census of the Carina Nebula — I. Cumulative energy input from massive stars
By N. Smith. 2006
138 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) is our richest nearby laboratory in which to study feedback through ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from very massive stars during the formation of an OB association, at an early phase in the evolution of the surrounding proto-superbubble before supernova explosions have influenced the environment. This feedback is triggering successive generations of new star formation around the periphery of the nebula, while simultaneously evaporating the gas and dust reservoirs out of which young stars are trying to accrete material. This paper takes inventory of the combined effect from all the known massive stars that power the Carina Nebula through their total ionizing flux and integrated mechanical energy from their stellar winds. Carina is close enough and accessible enough that spectral types for individual stars are available, and many close binary and multiple systems have recently been spatially resolved, so that one can simply add them. Adopting values from the literature for corresponding spectral types, the present-day total ionizing photon luminosity produced by the 65 O stars and three WNL stars in Carina is Q H ≃ 10 51 s -1 , the total bolometric luminosity of all stars earlier than B2 is 2.5 x 10 7 L ⊙ , and the total mechanical luminosity of stellar winds is L SW ≃ 10 5 L ⊙ . The total Q H was about 25 per cent higher when η Carinae was on the main sequence, before it and its companion were surrounded by its obscuring dust shell; for the first 3 Myr, the net ionizing flux of the 70 O stars in Carina was about 150 times greater than in the Orion Nebula. About 400-500 M ⊙ has been contributed to the H II region by stellar wind mass-loss during the past 3 Myr. Values for Q H and Lsw are also given for the individual clusters Trl4, 15 and 16, and BolO and 11, which are more relevant on smaller spatial scales than the total values for the whole nebula.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1065aa2c052648ef3325aeb4e9059854e5eaf83a
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Citations in the corpus
- Luminous blue variables are antisocial: their isolation implies that they are kicked mass gainers in binary evolution (2014, background): “…The famous LBV η Car is indeed in a young massive star cluster (Tr16 in the Carina nebula) containing a number of other massive O type stars (see Smith 2006), so in this sense its environment seems to make sense for the traditional view of LBVs — but it is the only one! η Car is also the…”
- The R136 star cluster hosts several stars whose individual masses greatly exceed the accepted 150 M⊙ stellar mass limit (2010, background): “O If∗ or even WN-type emission line spectra may be expected for the highest mass stars within the very youngest giant H II regions, as is the case for R136 and NGC 3603 here, plus Car OB1 (Smith 2006) and W43 (Blum, Damineli & Conti 1999).”
- Ancient eruptions of η Carinae: a tale written in proper motions (2016, methodology): “Moreover,ηCar has a massive binary companion in an eccentric 5.5-year orbit (Damineli 1996; Damineli et al. 1997, 2000; Corcoran et al. 2001; Whitelock et al. 2004), and is located in the rich cluster Trumpler 16, home to dozens of O-type stars (Smith 2006a).”
- STAR FORMATION IN MASSIVE CLUSTERS VIA THE WILKINSON MICROWAVE ANISOTROPY PROBE AND THE SPITZER GLIMPSE SURVEY (2009, background): “This is equal to the number of O stars in the Carina region as tabulated by Smith (2006), who also gives Q∗ = 1051s−1, which we also adopt for Cyg OB2; the total ionizing flux for the region will be somewhat larger, as there are a number of O and Wolf-Rayet stars with projected locations inside the…”