UV-IR photometry of SMC stars

Possible examples include LMC N66 and the V Sagittae stars. We present a survey using multi-object spectrographs looking for RAWDs in the central core of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), from objects selected to be bright in the far-UV and with blue far UV-V colors. While we find some unusual objects, and recover known planetary nebula and Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars, we detect no candidate RAWD.

The upper limits from this non-detection depend on our expectations of what an RAWD should look like, as well assumptions about the internal extinction of the SMC. Assuming they resemble LMC N66 or fainter versions of WR stars we set an upper limit of 10-14 RAWDs in the SMC. However, our survey is unlikely to detect objects like V Sge, and hence we cannot set meaningful upper limits if RAWDs generally resemble V Sge.