OH/IR stars in the inner bulge detected by ISOGAL ^*,**

¹ Departamento de Fisica, UFES, Av. Fernando Ferrari s/n, 29060-900, Vitoria, Brazil
² Leiden Observatory, Niels Bohrweg 2, Postbus 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
³ ISO Data Centre, Astrophysics Division, Space Science Dept. of ESA, Villafranca, PO Box 50727, 28080 Madrid, Spain
⁴ Instituut voor Sterrenkunde, K.U. Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200 B, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
⁵ Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, 98bis Bd. Arago, 75014, Paris, France
⁶ Physical Research Laboratory, Navarangpura, Ahmedabad 380009, India

Corresponding author: R. Ortiz, ortiz@cce.ufes.br

Received: 3 February 2000
Accepted: 4 April 2002

Abstract

We present a study of known OH/IR stars in the inner bulge, observed by the ISOGAL survey at m and m. Bolometric corrections and luminosities are computed, based on near and mid-infrared data. The vast majority of the sources exhibit mass-loss rates in the range: up to a few times /year. The bolometric magnitude distribution peaks at . There is no clear evidence that the luminosity is related to the expansion velocity of the envelope for the sample in the bulge observed by ISOGAL. We find that the bulge OH/IR stars do not follow a period-luminosity (PL) law and that they are systematically less luminous than the OH/IR extension of the PL relationship for Miras.