33 new Wolf Rayet stars

[2SPOT]

Our 2 SPOT team discovered 33 new Wolf Rayet-type stars by examining the GAIA data for potential candidates, then confirming them by producing a spectrum.

Lionel from our 2SPOT team carried out most of this work, with the invaluable collaboration of Jaroslav Merc from Charles University in Prague.

Here is the publication that has just appeared in Astronomy & Astrophysics :
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2 ... 359-24.pdf

Our contribution has enabled us to complete the existing catalogue of WR stars, here is the list of updated stars (our contributions are noted MMC25 in this table for Mulato, Merc, Charbonnel, the first 3 names of the aforementioned publication).
https://pacrowther.staff.shef.ac.uk/WRcat/index.php

And here is the history of updates to this catalogue, where our contribution is one of the most important to date:
https://pacrowther.staff.shef.ac.uk/WRcat/additions.php

This work has mobilised all our resources, both in Chile on our remote setup and in France on the Calern observatory at C2PU and in our respective personal observatories over a period of around 3 months.

[Tom Love]

This is fascinating work. Quite an achievement. It's a significant addition to the WR catalogue. Congratulations to all, and especially to Lionel.

[2SPOT]

Thank you Tom for your message.
The good thing is that this technique can be adapted to any type of star, you just need to set the right parameters at the start and of course confirm the candidates with a spectrum.