A Near-Infrared Survey of the Inner Galactic Plane for Wolf-Rayet Stars
  I. Methods and First Results: 41 New WR Stars
  The discovery of new Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars in our Galaxy via large-scale
narrowband optical surveys has been severely limited by dust extinction. Recent
improvements in infrared technology have made narrowband-broadband imaging
surveys viable again. We report a new J, K and narrow-band imaging survey of
300 square degrees of the plane of the Galaxy, spanning 150 degrees in Galactic
longitude and reaching 1 degree above and below the Galactic plane. The survey
has a useful limiting magnitude of K = 15 over most of the observed Galactic
plane, and K = 14 within a few degrees of the Galactic center. Thousands of
emission line candidates have been detected. In spectrographic follow-ups of
173 WR star candidates we have discovered 41 new WR stars, 15 of type WN and 26
of type WC. Star subtype assignments have been confirmed with K band spectra,
and distances approximated using the method of spectroscopic parallax. A few of
the new WR stars are amongst the most distant known in our Galaxy. The
distribution of these new WR stars is seen to follow that of previously known
WR stars along the spiral arms of the Galaxy. Tentative radial velocities were
also measured for most of the new WR stars.
