A Massive Runaway from a Young Massive Cluster

Our paper "A Massive Young Runaway Star in W49 North" by Rodríguez, Galván-Madrid, Sanchez-Bermudez & De Pree was published on The Astrophysical Journal. You can find it here.

We found large proper motions over a 18-yr time interval in the cometary UC HII region known as C. These motions are equivalent to a velocity in the plane of the sky of about 76 km/s. The bow-shock shape and brightness were modelled using the tools of Joel Sánchez-Bermúdez to derive a mass-loss rate and stellar mass for the runaway of about 33 Msun (O6 ZAMS).

Finding a recent (~ 6400 yr) massive runaway from a massive cluster that is still deeply embedded in its parent clump (age < 1 Myr) such as W49 N nicely complements previous findings of runaway stars with travel times ~ 1 Myr in more evolved clusters such as R136 or Cygnus OB2.

Runaway W49 N

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