LMC195-1 is a Wolf–Rayet star 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, at WO2 the hottest known in the LMC. It is likely to be one of the hottest stars known. The star was first observed in a 2013 survey of the Magellanic Clouds using the 1m Swope telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The survey was intended to identify Wolf–Rayet candidate stars by taking images through narrow-bandwidth filters centred on the 465.0 nm C_III and 468.6 nm He_II spectral lines together with a continuum filter at 475.0 nm. Digital subtraction of the separate images was used to highlight stars with particularly strong emission at one or both of the indicative spectral lines. The first survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud in October 2013 identified eight previously unknown candidate objects, of which five were later confirmed to be Wolf Rayet stars. LMC 195-1 is located in the rich LH-41 ( NGC 1910)

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 the

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 ...

as well as another WO star

LH 41-1042 LH 41-1042 is a Wolf–Rayet star located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (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 ...

. 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 WO2 subclass is defined as having the ratio of O_VI to O_V emission strength between four and 12.5. Higher values would indicate WO1, while smaller values would be WO3 or WO4. In the new star, the ratio of these line strengths was 4.5.

References

See also