Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars represent the final stage of the evolution of very massive stars just before exploding as core-collapse supernovae (SNe). Quantifying the population of WR stars in the local Universe can help us study the impact on the interstellar medium of the host galaxy and assess their formation paradigm (single versus binary). We report the detection of a WR star cluster complex (SCC) in the Antennae galaxies (NGC 4038/NGC 4039), from public spectroscopic observations in the Gran Telescopio Canarias. We analyse the spectrum to classify it to some of the known WR sub-types using template spectra of WR stars in our Galaxy. Other 6 SCCs with WR features previously reported in Bastian et al. (2006) were also analyzed. So far we have counted and classified several hundreds of WR stars in SCCs of Antennae, increasing the sample of extragalactic core collapse SNe and GRB candidates.
Enviado por v.gomez@irya.unam.mx, 2019 Oct