Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
Doi
Abstract
The candidate Thorne-\.Zytkow object (T\.ZO), HV2112, is becoming a
well-studied if enigmatic object. A key point of its candidacy as a T\.ZO is
whether or not it resides in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). HV2112 has
detections in a series of photometric catalogues which have resulted in
contradictory estimates of its proper motion and, therefore, its membership
within the SMC. This letter seeks to resolve the issue of the SMC membership of
HV2112 through a reanalysis of extant photometric data. We also demonstrate the
difficulties and downfalls inherent in considering a range of catalogue proper
motions. We conclude that the proper motion, and associated ancillary radial
velocity, positional and photometric properties, are fully consistent with
HV2112 being within the SMC and thus it remains a candidate T\.ZO.This work is based on observations collected at the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere under ESO programme(s) 179.B-2003 and was partly supported by the European Union FP7 programme through ERC grant number 320360. RGI thanks the STFC for funding for his Rutherford fellowship. CAT thanks Churchill College for his fellowship. This research has made use of the VizieR catalogue access tool (A&AS, 143, 23), the Aladin sky atlas and the SIMBAD data base developed and operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. The Digitized Sky Surveys (DSS) were produced at the Space Telescope Science Institute under US Government grant NAG W-2166.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Oxford University Press via http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/slw03
