The DOI matches its Crossref record; 17 of the 17 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
An upper limit to the masses of stars
Open accessAbstract
There is no accepted upper mass limit for stars. Such a basic quantity eludes both theory and observation, because of an imperfect understanding of the star-formation process and because of incompleteness in surveying the Galaxy. The Arches cluster is ideal for investigating such limits, being large enough to expect stars at least as massive as ∼500 solar masses (∼ 500 M [circdot]; based on a typical mass function), and young enough for its most massive members to still be visible. It is also old enough to be free of its natal molecular cloud, it is at a well-established distance, and it is close enough for us to discern its individual stars. Here I report an absence of stars with initial masses greater than 130 M [circdot] in the Arches cluster, whereas the typical mass function predicts 18. I conclude that this indicates a firm limit of 150 M [circdot] for stars; the probability that the observations are consistent with there being no upper limit is 10-8.
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Cites
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Self-citationMassive Stars in the Arches Cluster
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Cited by
Toward Understanding Massive Star Formation
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Physical Properties of Wolf-Rayet Stars
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The death of massive stars - I. Observational constraints on the progenitors of Type II-P supernovae
Smartt, S. J., Eldridge, J. J., Crockett, R. M., & Maund, J. R. (2009) · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.14506.x · Cited by 768
Pulsational pair instability as an explanation for the most luminous supernovae
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Metadata
- Authors
- Figer, D. F.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2005-03
- Volume
- 434
- Issue
- 7030
- Pages
- 192-194
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2054219587
- Cited by
- 318
- References
- 17
- FWCI
- 13.27
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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