2mass-allsky

The First Hypervelocity Star from the LAMOST Survey

April 2014 • 2014ApJ...785L..23Z

Authors • Zheng, Zheng • Carlin, Jeffrey L. • Beers, Timothy C. • Deng, Licai • Grillmair, Carl J. • Guhathakurta, Puragra • Lépine, Sébastien • Newberg, Heidi Jo • Yanny, Brian • Zhang, Haotong • Liu, Chao • Jin, Ge • Zhang, Yong

Abstract • We report the first hypervelocity star (HVS) discovered from the LAMOST spectroscopic survey. It is a B-type star with a heliocentric radial velocity of about 620 km s-1, which projects to a Galactocentric radial velocity component of ~477 km s-1. With a heliocentric distance of ~13 kpc and an apparent magnitude of ~13 mag, it is the closest bright HVS currently known. With a mass of ~9 M , it is one of the three most massive HVSs discovered so far. The star is clustered on the sky with many other known HVSs, and its position suggests a possible connection to Galactic center structures. With the current poorly determined proper motion, a Galactic center origin of this HVS remains consistent with the data at the 1σ level, while a disk runaway origin cannot be excluded. We discuss the potential of the LAMOST survey to discover a large statistical sample of HVSs of different types.

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IPAC Authors
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Grillmaira

Carl Grillmair

Associate Scientist