Chandra monitoring of the very massive binary WR20a and the young massive cluster Westerlund2

TL;DR

This study uses Chandra X-ray observations to analyze massive stars and the young cluster Westerlund2, revealing details about Wolf-Rayet stars, O-type stars, and pre-main sequence objects, including variability and binary indications.

Contribution

First detailed X-ray analysis of WR20a, WR20b, and Westerlund2, identifying new O-type candidates and investigating their properties and variability.

Findings

WR20a brightens during eclipses due to wind collision absorption.

Twelve O-type stars detected, with some being overluminous or binary candidates.

Faint diffuse X-ray emission observed across the field.

Abstract

Results: The two Wolf-Rayet stars WR20a (WN6ha+WN6ha) and WR20b (WN6ha) were analyzed in detail. They are both very luminous and display very hard spectra, but WR20b does not seem to vary. On the contrary, WR20a, a known eclipsing, colliding-wind binary, brightens in the X-ray domain during the eclipses, i.e. when the collision is seen face-on. This can be explained by the properties of the wind-wind collision zone, whose high density leads to a large absorbing column (2 10^24 cm^-2).All twelve O-type stars previously classified spectroscopically, two eclipsing binaries previously identified and nine newly identified O-type star candidates are detected in the high energy domain; ten of them could be analyzed spectroscopically. Four are overluminous, but the others present typical L_X/L_BOL ratios, suggesting that several O-type objects are actually binaries. Variability at the ~2sigma level was detected for a majority of the sources, of unknown origin for the putatively single objects. Faint, soft, diffuse emission pervades the entire field-of-view but no clear structure can be identified, even at the position of a blister proposed to be at the origin of the TeV source HESS J1023-575. Finally, the X-ray properties of PMS objects were also investigated, in particular the brightest flaring ones. They provided an additional argument in favor of a large distance (~8kpc) for the cluster.