Supergiant radial and nonradial pulsations. Lecture 10

The stars that we consider here have luminosities above 10,000 solar luminosities and masses above 15 solar masses. We contact the 53 Per stars such as #betta# Ori, 10 Lac, and iota CMa at our lower luminosity limit, and at the most luminous limit, we have the famous stars eta Car, Cyg OB12, and P Cyg. Evolution tracks including a reasonable mass loss rate are given for 15, 30, 60, and 120 solar masses. It appears that our pulsators have masses less than 60 solar masses, but how do the most luminous stars observed survive mass loss. Do they have masses above 100 solar masses as indicated, or are these stars somehow superluminous due to their erratic mass loss behavior. Popper (1980) studying the masses in binary systems has never found one with a value greater than 27 solar masses