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Alexandre Roman-Lopes |
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In this talk I report the identification of two new Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars in Circinus via detection of their C, N and He near-infrared emission lines, using the ESO-NTT-SOFI facility. The H- and K-band spectra of WR 67a and WR 67b indicate that these are Wolf-Rayet stars of WN 6h and WC 8 subtypes, respectively. WR 67b is probably a non-dusty WC 8 Wolf-Rayet star placed at an estimated heliocentric distance of 2.7 ± 0.9 kpc, which for its Galactic coordinates puts the star probably in the near portion of the Scutum-Centaurus arm. On the other hand, WR 67a presents a weak-lined spectrum probably reminiscent of very massive young hydrogen-rich main-sequence stars, such as WR 25 (WN6ha) in Car OB1 and HD 97950 (WN6ha) in NGC 3603 . Indeed, this conclusion is reinforced by the close morphological match of the WR 67a H- and K-band spectra with that for WR 21a (WN6ha + early-O), a known extremely massive binary system. |