Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Rivet, J-P
• Siciak, A
• de Almeida, E S G
• Vakili, F
• Domiciano de Souza, A
• Fouché, M
• Lai, O
• Vernet, D
• Kaiser, R
• Guerin, W

Titel

Intensity interferometry of P Cygni in the H α emission line: towards distance calibration of LBV supergiant stars

Ist Teil von

• Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2020-05, Vol.494 (1), p.218-227

Ort / Verlag

Oxford University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• ABSTRACT We present intensity interferometry of the luminous blue variable P Cyg in the light of its H α emission performed with 1 m-class telescopes. We compare the measured visibility points to synthesized interferometric data based on the CMFGEN physical modelling of a high-resolution spectrum of P Cyg recorded almost simultaneously with our interferometry data. Tuning the stellar parameters of P Cyg and its H α linear diameter, we estimate the distance of P Cyg as 1.56 ± 0.25 kpc, which is compatible within 1σ with 1.36 ± 0.24 kpc reported by the Gaia DR2 catalogue of parallaxes recently published. Both the values are significantly smaller than the canonic value of 1.80 ± 0.10 kpc usually adopted in literature. Our method used to calibrate the distance of P Cyg can apply to very massive and luminous stars both in our Galaxy and neighbouring galaxies, and can improve the so-called wind momentum–luminosity relation that potentially applies to calibrate cosmological candles in the local Universe.