Extreme Adaptive Optics Astrometry of R136
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This is a repository copy of Extreme adaptive optics astrometry of R136. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/174500/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Khorrami, Z, Langlois, M, Vakili, F et al. (9 more authors) (2021) Extreme adaptive optics astrometry of R136. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 649. L8. ISSN 0004-6361 https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202140668 © ESO 2021. This is an author produced version of an article published in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Astronomy & Astrophysics manuscript no. 40668corr ©ESO 2021 April 28, 2021 Letter to the Editor Extreme adaptive optics astrometry of R136⋆ Searching for high proper motion stars⋆⋆ Z. Khorrami1, M. Langlois2, F. Vakili3, P. C. Clark1, A. S. M. Buckner4, M. Gonzalez5, P. Crowther6, R. Wünsch7, J. Palouš7, A. Boccaletti8, S. Lumsden9, and E. Moraux5 1 School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3AA, UK e-mail: [email protected] 2 Universite de Lyon, Universite Lyon 1, CNRS, CRAL UMR5574, Saint-Genis Laval, France 3 Universite Cote d’Azur, OCA, CNRS, Lagrange, France 4 School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter, EX4 4QL, UK 5 Universite Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, F-38000 Grenoble, France 6 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Hounsfield Road, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S3 7RH, UK 7 Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, BocníIIˇ 1401/1a, 141 00 Praha 4, Czech Republic 8 LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, CNRS, Universite Paris 7, Universite Paris 6, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92190 Meudon, France 9 School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK ABSTRACT We compared high-contrast near-infrared images of the core of R136 taken by VLT/SPHERE, in two epochs separated by 3.06 years. For the first time we monitored the dynamics of the detected sources in the core of R136 from a ground-based telescope with adaptive optics. The aim of these observations was to search for High prOper Motion cAndidates (HOMAs) in the central region of R136 (r < 6”) where it has been challenging for other instruments. Two bright sources (K< 15 mag and V< 16 mag) are located near R136a1 and R136c (massive WR stars) and have been identified as potential HOMAs. These sources have significantly shifted in the images with respect to the mean shift of all reliable detected sources and their neighbours, and six times their own astrometric errors. We calculate their proper motions to be 1.36 ± 0.22 mas/yr (321 ± 52 km/s) and 1.15 ± 0.11 mas/yr (273 ± 26 km/s). We discuss different possible scenarios to explain the magnitude of such extreme proper motions, and argue for the necessity to conduct future observations to conclude on the nature of HOMAs in the core of R136. Key words. star clusters: individual: R136 – Astrometry – Proper motions – Instrumentation: high angular resolution – Instrumen- tation: adaptive optics 1. Introduction sources in the core of R136 searching for High prOper Motion cAndidates (HOMAs1). The presence of such high-velocity stars The R136 star cluster in the 30 Dor region of the Large Mag- in the core of massive young star clusters can explain or change ellanic Cloud (LMC) is a unique astrophysical laboratory; it the hypothesis on the formation of massive stars (if they form is sufficiently young (1.5-2 Myr, de Koter, Heap, & Hubeny either in isolation or were ejected dynamically from the cluster) 1998; Crowther et al. 2016; Bestenlehner et al. 2020) and rich and the dynamics of the 30 Dor region as a whole. (Crowther et al. 2010) to allow the study of the formation and The proper motion (PM) measurement of stars in 30 Dor evolution of the most massive stars. Most of the information relies on HST data taken with various instruments (WFPC2, on R136 comes from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) obser- ACS/WFC, and WFC3/UVIS) and filters in different epochs vations, which was used to study various parameters including (Platais et al. 2015, 2018). There are therefor several difficulties the cluster’s star formation history, stellar content, and kinemat- with obtaining these measurements since the data in each instru- ics (Hunter et al. 1995; Andersen et al. 2009; De Marchi et al. ment (and filter) show coordinate-dependent systematic and geo- 2011; Cignoni et al. 2015). Using the Spectro-Polarimetric High- metric distortions that appear in the transformation of instrument arXiv:2104.12819v1 [astro-ph.SR] 26 Apr 2021 contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE, Beuzit et al. 2019) of the pixel coordinates and the PMs. Among the higher-precision PM Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2015 we obtained the first epoch sources, a handful of stars exceed 1mas/yr, but were excluded observations of the R136 core (Khorrami et al. 2017) in the near- from the analysis by setting an upper limit on the velocity of infrared (NIR), and in 2018 we obtained a second set of observa- stars based on the maximum radial velocity measurements from tions for this region (Khorrami et al. 2021). Comparing the two VLT Flames Tarantula Survey (VFTS) observations (Evans et sets of observations, we monitored the dynamics of the detected al. 2011). The PM measurements in the 30 Dor region, as given ⋆ by HST and recently by Gaia (Lennon et al. 2018), do not de- Catalogue of reliable-consistent sources is only available in tect sources at the core of R136 because of the concentration of electronic form at the CDS via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/ cgi-bin/qcat?J/A+A/ ⋆⋆ Based on observations made with ESO Telescopes at the La Silla 1 Homa is a mythical bird from Iranian legends that never comes to Paranal Observatory under programme ID 0102.D0271 and 095.D-0309 rest, living its entire life flying invisibly high above the earth. Article number, page 1 of 6 A&A proofs: manuscript no. 40668corr bright sources and their small angular separations. Thus, higher done on the combined left and right images, but separate photo- angular resolution and small pixel sampling are needed to im- metric analyses of the left and right images were required for the prove the PM measurements without overexposing the bright present purpose. sources (and masking their faint neighbours); better estimations The common sources between the two images were defined of the positions of stars are also needed during the photometry according to their position 2, their magnitude difference being for point spread function (PSF) fitting. SPHERE/IRDIS can ob- less than 0.5, and the correlation between their input PSF and serve the core of R136 in the NIR where the flux ratio of stars is detected sources less than 10%. This means that the detected lower than in the optical, and with higher angular resolution and sources in the two images have a very similar PSF shape since pixel sampling (12.25 mas/pix) than the HST (e.g. WFC3/UVIS the input PSF stars are chosen to be the same in all four images. has 40 mas/pix). These parameters make IRDIS the best instru- The number of common sources between the left and right K ment available at present to resolve the higher number of stars images was 705 and 1451 in 2015 and 2018, respectively. Al- in the core of R136. Additionally, IRDIS produces two sets of though in principle we should not see any shift in the position data simultaneously taken within the same filter, overcoming the of the common sources per epoch, our astrometry analysis still instrumental errors such as bad pixels and imperfections of the measures the shift for each detected source in each epoch be- detector, which are critical to the PM measurements. tween the left and right images. This shift can be caused by the instrument, detector bad pixels, locally varying pixel scales, and flux difference between the left and right images. We call this 2. Data the “instrumental shift” because it does not represent potential We used two sets of imaging data over a field of view (FOV) physical movement of the stars. If it is larger than half a pixel, of 11"× 12" centred on the core of R136 in the K band in we withdraw the source from our final astrometry analysis. Af- 2015 (2015-09-22, ID 095.D-0309) and 2018 (2018-10-10, ID ter applying this constraint, a total of 515 (in 2015) and 1059 0102.D-0271). These two sets of epoch data were recorded us- (in 2018) sources in common between the left and right images ing the classical imaging mode of IRDIS (Langlois et al. 2014). remain. The final number of common sources after this selection Using the data taken with the same instrument and exactly the is 494. same configuration, 3.06 yr apart, enabled us to study the dy- namics of the core of R136 with the highest angular resolution to date.