Research Note: Rotation and the wind momentum-luminosity relation for extragalactic distances

Abstract

The effects of axial stellar rotation on the wind-momentum relation (WLR) for determining the extragalactic distances are investigated. Despite the fact that the mass loss rates grow quite a lot with rotation, remarkably the effects on the WLR are found to be very small on the average. As an example, for an average orientation angle between the rotation axis and the line of sight, the luminosity would be overestimated by 5.9 % for a star rotating at 90% of its break-up rotational velocity. Different orientation angles between the rotation axis and the line of sight produce some limited scatter.