AAS Meeting #193 - Austin, Texas, January 1999
Session 67. Open Clusters
Display, Friday, January 8, 1999, 9:20am-6:30pm, Exhibit Hall 1

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[67.05] STIS/HST Ultraviolet Spectroscopy of OB Stars in NGC 604

F. C. Bruhweiler, M. Smith Neubig (IACS/CUA), C. Miskey (IACS/CUA/GSFC), D. Lindler, P. Plait (ACC Inc./GSFC), N. Collins (Raytheon/STX/GSFC)

A single exposure, using the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), shows UV spectra of approximately 40 O and B stars in the core of NGC~604, the extraordinarily bright H~II region in M~33. The spectral image, acquired with the G140L grating and the MAMA detector, is of a 20" by 2" region and has a wavelength coverage from 1150 to 1730/AA. The 52" by 2" slit was used to confine the Ly\alpha background to the region of aperture and to reduce contamination of overlapping UV stellar spectra surrounding the core of NGC~604. An iterative technique has been developed and used to extract individual spectra of stars seen in the aperture. These spectra clearly reveal several Wolf-Rayet stars, as well as luminous OB Supergiants. Preliminary UV spectral types have been assigned to the higher signal-to-noise spectra using criteria developed previously by Neubig & Bruhweiler. The stellar metallicity and properties of mass loss appear to be comparable to that of the Milky Way. The results of this investigation indicates that STIS spectroscopy, either acquired with the large 52" x2" slit or in slitless mode, should be an extremely important tool for probing young star-forming regions in galaxies of the Local Group.


The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: bruhweiler@cua.edu

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