Description
We expect the evolution of massive stars to be strongly influenced by mass loss and hence to be sensitive to metallicity. It should be possible to test this "Conti scenario" be comparing the populations of evolved massive stars among the Local Group galaxies, but such investigations have been hampered by incompleteness. In a previous paper, we presented results of a new survey for red supergiants (RSGs) in selected regions of the Local Group galaxies M33, M31, and NGC 6822. In the present paper, we survey eight fields in M33 for Wolf-Rayet stars (WRs), using interference-filter imaging with a CCD to select candidates. Follow-up spectroscopy is used to confirm 22 newly found WR stars, 21 of WN type. We establish that our survey would readily detect WRs as weak-lined as any known, and we conclude that our survey is essentially complete.
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