New Estimates of the Solar-Neighborhood Massive Star Birthrate and the Galactic Supernova Rate

1 October 2005

journal article
Published by American Astronomical Society in The Astronomical Journal

Vol. 130 (4) , 1652-1657
https://doi.org/10.1086/444474

Abstract

The birthrate of stars of masses > 10 solar masses is estimated from a sample of just over 400 O3-B2 dwarfs within 1.5 kpc of the Sun and the result extrapolated to estimate the galactic supernova rate contributed by such stars. The solar-neighborhood galactic-plane massive star birthrate is estimated at 176 stars per cubic kpc per million years. Based on a model where the galactic stellar density distribution comprises a disk plus central hole like that of the dust infrared emission (Drimmel & Spergel 2001 ApJ 556, 181) the galactic supernova rate is estimated as probably not less than 1 nor more than 2 per century and the number of O3-B2 dwarfs within the solar circle as ~ 200,000.Comment: Accepted for publication in A

Keywords

All Related Versions

Version 1, 2005-06-28, ArXiv

This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit:

Stellar Interiors
Published by Springer Nature ,2004
Massive Stars in the Local Group: Implications for Stellar Evolution and Star Formation
Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2003
Catalog of Galactic OB Stars
The Astronomical Journal, 2003
Three‐dimensional Structure of the Milky Way Disk: The Distribution of Stars and Dust beyond 0.35R_⊙
The Astrophysical Journal, 2001
Luminosity Function of Solar‐Neighborhood OB Stars
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2001
New Estimates of the Scale Height and Surface Density of OB Stars in the Solar Neighborhood
The Astronomical Journal, 2000
The Brightest Binaries
Published by Springer Nature ,1998
The Lyman-Continuum Fluxes and Stellar Parameters of O and Early B-Type Stars
The Astrophysical Journal, 1996
Galactic and Extragalactic Supernova Rates
Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 1991
Association membership for the 20 day Cepheid RU Scuti
The Astrophysical Journal, 1980