LH 41-1042 is a

Wolf–Rayet star Wolf–Rayet stars, often abbreviated as WR stars, are a rare heterogeneous set of stars with unusual spectra showing prominent broad emission lines of ionised helium and highly ionised nitrogen or carbon. The spectra indicate very high surface ...

located in the

Large Magellanic Cloud The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), or Nubecula Major, is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. At a distance of around 50 kiloparsecs (≈160,000 light-years), the LMC is the second- or third-closest galaxy to the Milky Way, after the ...

(LMC). It is an extremely rare member of the WO oxygen sequence, the second to be discovered in the LMC and one of only three found so far in that galaxy. The star was identified in 2012 during an investigation of the

LH41 NGC 1910, or LH-41, is an OB association in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Location NGC 1910's right ascension is and its declination is -69° 14′ 12.1″. Its angular size is 1.54 arcminutes. N119 The cluster has an associated HII region ...

stellar association, also known as NGC 1910, using one of the 6.5m Magellan Telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

. LH 41-1042 is located in the rich LH 41 (

NGC 1910 NGC 1910, or LH-41, is an OB association in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Location NGC 1910's right ascension is and its declination is -69° 14′ 12.1″. Its angular size is 1.54 arcminutes. N119 The cluster has an associated HII regi ...

)

stellar association A stellar association is a very loose star cluster, looser than both open clusters and globular clusters. Stellar associations will normally contain from 10 to 100 or more stars. The stars share a common origin, but have become gravitationally u ...

that contains two

luminous blue variable Luminous blue variables (LBVs) are massive evolved stars that show unpredictable and sometimes dramatic variations in their spectra and brightness. They are also known as S Doradus variables after S Doradus, one of the brightest stars of the Larg ...

S Doradus S Doradus (also known as S Dor) is one of the brightest stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located roughly 160,000 light-years away. The star is a luminous blue variable, and one of the ...

and

R85 R85 (or RMC 85, after the Radcliffe Observatory Magellanic Clouds catalog) is a candidate luminous blue variable located in the LH-41 OB association in the Large Magellanic Cloud. R85 has been shown to vary erratically in brightness wi ...

, the WN5 star BAT99-27, and another WO star

LMC195-1 LMC195-1 is a Wolf–Rayet star located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). It is an extremely rare member of the WO oxygen sequence, at WO2 the hottest known in the LMC. It is likely to be one of the hottest stars known. The star wa ...

. The two WO stars are only 9" apart. WO stars are classified on the basis of O_VI emission at 381.1-383.4 nm, which is weak or absent in other Wolf–Rayet stars. The WO4 subclass is defined as having the ratio of O_VI to O_V emission strength between 0.5 and 1.8. In the new star, the ratio of these line strengths was 0.7. The high temperature and high luminosity of LH 41-1042 produce a

stellar wind A stellar wind is a flow of gas ejected from the upper atmosphere of a star. It is distinguished from the bipolar outflows characteristic of young stars by being less collimated, although stellar winds are not generally spherically symmetric. D ...

travelling at 3,500 km/s and it is losing mass about a billion times more quickly than the sun. It is estimated that it has exhausted its core helium and only has 9,000 years left before it explodes as a

type Ic supernova Type Ib and Type Ic supernovae are categories of supernovae that are caused by the stellar core collapse of massive stars. These stars have shed or been stripped of their outer envelope of hydrogen, and, when compared to the spectrum ...

References

See also