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Description
The VIIth catalogue of galactic Population I Wolf Rayet stars provides improved coordinates, spectral types and bv photometry of known WR stars and adds 71 new WR stars to the previous WR catalogue. This census of galactic WR stars reaches 227 stars, comprising 127 WN stars, 87 WC stars, 10 WN/WC stars and 3 WO stars. This includes 15 WNL and 11 WCL stars within 30 pc of the Galactic Center. We compile and discuss WR spectral classification, variability, periodicity, binarity, terminal wind velocities, correlation with open clusters and OB associations, and correlation with H I bubbles, H II regions and ring nebulae. Intrinsic colours and absolute visual magnitudes per subtype are re-assessed for a re-determination of optical photometric distances and galactic distribution of WR stars. In the solar neighbourhood we find projected on the galactic plane a surface density of 3.3 WR stars per kpc^2^, with a WC/WN number ratio of 1.5, and a WR binary frequency (including probable binaries) of 39%. The galactocentric distance (R_WR_) distribution per subtype shows R_WR_ increasing with decreasing WR subtype, both for the WN and WC subtypes. This R_WR_ distribution allows for the possibility of WNE->WCE and WNL->WCL subtype evolution. The successive catalogues of galactic WR stars are: I 55 stars Campbell, 1884 Astronomy and Astrophysics 13, 448 (Northfield, Minn: Goodsell Observatory) II 108 stars Fleming, 1912 Harvard College Obs. Ann. 56, 165 III 92 stars Payne, 1930 The Stars of High Luminosity, Harvard Obs. Monographs No. 3, p. 19 IV 123 stars Roberts, 1962AJ.....67...79R V 127 stars Smith, 1968MNRAS.138..109S VI 157 stars van der Hucht et al., 1981SSRv...28..227V VII 227 stars van der Hucht, 2001NewAR..45..135V, this paper
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