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Description
Massive OB stars are critical to the ecology of galaxies, and yet our knowledge of OB stars in the Milky Way, fainter than V~12, remains patchy. Data from the VST Photometric H-alpha Survey (VPHAS+) permit the construction of the first deep catalogues of blue excess-selected OB stars, without neglecting the stellar field. A total of 14900 candidates with 2MASS cross-matches are blue-selected from a 42 square-degree region in the Galactic longitude range 282{deg}<l<293{deg} Spectral energy distribution fitting is performed on these candidates' combined VPHAS+ u/g/r/i and 2MASS J/H/K magnitudes. This delivers: effective temperature constraints, statistically separating O from early-B stars; high-quality extinction parameters, A_0_ and R_V_ (random errors typically <0.1). The high confidence O-B2 candidates number 5915 and a further 5170 fit to later B spectral type. Spectroscopy of 276 of the former confirms 97% of them. The fraction of emission line stars among all candidate B stars is 7-8%. Greyer (R_V_>3.5) extinction laws are ubiquitous in the region, over the distance range 2.5-3kpc to ~10kpc. Near prominent massive clusters, R_V_ tends to rise, with particularly large and chaotic excursions to R_V_~5 seen in the Carina Nebula. The data reveal a hitherto unnoticed association of 108 O-B2 stars around the O5If+ star LSS 2063 (l=289.77{deg}, b=-1.22{deg}). Treating the OB star scale-height as a constant within the thin disk, we find an orderly mean relation between extinction (A_0_) and distance in the Galactic longitude range, 287.6{deg}<l< 293.5{deg}, and infer the subtle onset of thin-disk warping. A halo around NGC 3603, roughly a degree in diameter, of ~500 O-B2 stars with 4<A_0_(mag)<7 is noted.
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