Spectrophotometery of Brackett lines in very luminous IRAS galaxies

Observation of the Brackett-alpha and Brackett-gamma hydrogen recombination lines were made in a sample of galaxies chosen from the IRAS catalog to have high luminosities at infrared wavelengths. Most have strong Brackett line emission indicating large numbers of high mass stars; the formation of these stars may hence be the underlying source for the galaxies' luminosities. However, there are at least two exceptions that may not be explained in this manner: NGC 6240 and Arp 220. Additional evidence indicates that each of these exceptions may be more closely related to Seyfert-type galaxies or other active galactic nuclei

Luminosity Function of the Perigalactocentric Region

We present H and K photometry of 42,000 stars in an area of 250 arcmin$^{2}$ centered on the Galactic center. We use the photometry to construct a dereddened K band luminosity function (LF) for this region, excluding the excessively crowded inner 2' of the Galaxy. This LF is intermediate between the LF of Baade's window and the LF of inner 2' of the Galactic center. We speculate that the bright stars in this region have an age which is intermediate between the starburst population in the Galactic center and the old bulge population. We present the coordinates and mags for 16 stars with K_{0} < 5 for spectroscopic follow up.Comment: 25 pages. Tarred, gzipped and uuencoded. Includes LaTex source file, Figures 3 to 9 and 5 Tables. Figures 1 and 2 are available at ftp://bessel.mps.ohio-state.edu/pub/vijay . Submitted to Ap

The Nature of the Variable Galactic Center Source IRS16SW

We report measurements of the light curve of the variable Galactic Center source IRS16SW. The light curve is not consistent with an eclipsing binary or any other obvious variable star. The source may be an example of a high mass variable predicted theoretically but not observed previously.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures. Accepted by Ap

Really Cool Stars at the Galactic Center

New and existing K-band spectra for 19 Galactic center late-type stars have been analyzed along with representative spectra of disk and bulge M giants and supergiants. Absorption strengths for strong atomic and molecular features have been measured. The Galactic center stars generally exhibit stronger absorption features centered near Na I (2.206 mic) and Ca I (2.264 mic) than representative disk M stars at the same CO absorption strength. Based on the absolute K-band magnitudes and CO and H2O absorption strengths for the Galactic center stars and known M supergiants and asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, we conclude that only IRS 7 must be a supergiant. Two other bright stars in our Galactic center sample are likely supergiants as well. The remaining bright, cool stars in the Galactic center that we have observed are most consistent with being intermediate mass/age AGB stars. We identify four of the Galactic center stars as long period variables based on their K-band spectral properties and associated photometric variability. Estimates of initial masses and ages for the GC stars suggest multiple epochs of star formation have occurred in the Galactic center over the last 7-100 Myr.Comment: Accepted by AJ. 37 pages (latex, aastex v4.0, 2 planotables, 5 figures, embedded, eps). Postscript also available at ftp://degobah.colorado.edu/pub/rblum/RCS2, Some minor changes made to text and figures regarding Stars IRS 28, OSUC1-3. No significant changes to conclusion

Metallicity of Red Giants in the Galactic Bulge from Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

We present K-band spectra of more than 110 M giants in Galactic bulge fields interior to -4 degrees and as close as 0.2 degrees of the Galactic Center. From the equivalent widths of three features in these spectra, EW(Na),EW(Ca), and EW(CO) we calculate [Fe/H] for the stars with a calibration derived from globular clusters Stephens et al (2000). The mean [Fe/H] for each field is in good agreement with the results from Frogel et al. (1999) based on the slope of the giant branch method. We find no evidence for a metallicity gradient along the minor or major axes of the inner bulge (R < 0.6 kpc). A metallicity gradient along the minor axis, found earlier, arises when fields located at larger galactic radius are included. However, these more distant fields are located outside of the infrared bulge defined by the COBE/DIRBE observations. We compute the [Fe/H] distribution for the inner bulge and find a mean value of -0.21 dex with a full width dispersion of 0.30 dex, close to the values found for Baade's Window (BW) by Sadler et al. (1996) and to a theoretical prediction for a bulge formed by dissipative collapse Molla et al (2000).Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures, AJ submitte