scholarly journals Pulsations of Ob-Stars: New Observations

1998 ◽  
Vol 185 ◽  
pp. 347-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dietrich Baade

Improved observing and data analysis strategies have initiated a considerable expansion of the empirical knowledge about the pulsations of OB stars. Possible correlations between physical parameters and associated pulsation characteristics are becoming more clearly perceivable. This starts to include the asteroseismologically fundamental areas of g-modes and rapid rotation. The β Cephei instability strip continues to be the only locus where radial pulsations occur (but apparently not in all stars located in that strip). Except for spectral types B8/B9 near the main sequence, where pulsations are hardly detected even at low amplitudes, any major group of stars in the Galaxy that are obviously not candidate pulsators still remains to be identified. However, the incidence and amplitudes of OB star pulsations decrease steeply with metallicity. The behaviour of high-luminosity stars is less often dominated by very few modes. In broad-lined stars the moving-bump phenomenon is more common than low-order line-profile variability. But its relation to nonradial pulsation is not clear. The beating of low-ℓ nonradial pulsation modes that have identical angular mode indices may be the clockwork of the outbursts of at least some Be stars. The physics of this episodic mass loss process remains to be identified.

2003 ◽  
Vol 212 ◽  
pp. 162-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Daflon ◽  
Katia Cunha

We present non-LTE abundances of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, magnesium, aluminum, silicon and sulfur, derived for a sample of 70 O9-B2 main sequence stars of the Galactic disk and analyze the distribution of the chemical abundances in terms of radial gradients within 4.4-12.9 kpc from the center of the Galaxy. The derived gradients are flatter than those presented by the most recent studies about the radial gradients of stellar abundances.


2020 ◽  
Vol 493 (2) ◽  
pp. 1996-2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
D Deras ◽  
A Arellano Ferro ◽  
C Lázaro ◽  
I H Bustos Fierro ◽  
J H Calderón ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We present an analysis of ${VI}$ CCD time-series photometry of globular cluster NGC 6712. Our main goal is to study the variable star population as indicators of the cluster mean physical parameters. We employed the Fourier decomposition of RR Lyrae light curves to confirm that ${}[\rm Fe/H]_{UVES} = -1.0 \pm 0.05$ is a solid estimate. We estimated the reddening to the cluster as E(B − V) = 0.35 ± 0.04 from the RRab stars colour curves. The distance to the cluster was estimated using three independent methods which yielded a weighted mean distance <d > = 8.1 ± 0.2 kpc. The distribution of RRab and RRc stars on the horizontal branch shows a clear segregation around the first overtone red edge of the instability strip, which seems to be a common feature in OoI-type cluster with a very red horizontal branch. We carried out a membership analysis of 60 447 stars in our field of view (FoV) using the data from Gaia-DR2 and found 1529 likely members; we possess the light curves of 1100 among the member stars. This allowed us to produce a clean colour–magnitude diagram, consistent with an age of 12 Gyr, and enabled us to discover close unresolved contaminants for several variable stars. From the proper motion analysis, we found evidence of non-member stars in the FoV of the cluster being tidally affected by the gravitational pull of the bulge of the Galaxy. We found that the RRab variable V6, shows a previously undetected Blazhko effect. Finally, we report 16 new variables of the EW-type (9) and SR-type (7).


2018 ◽  
Vol 619 ◽  
pp. A148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaël Nazé ◽  
Christian Motch

We perform a survey of Oe and Be stars in the X-ray range. To this aim, we cross-correlated XMM-Newton and Chandra catalogs of X-ray sources with a list of Be stars, finding 84 matches in total. Of these, 51 objects had enough counts for a spectral analysis. This paper provides the derived X-ray properties (X-ray luminosities, and whenever possible, hardness ratios, plasma temperatures, and variability assessment) of this largest ever sample of Oe and Be stars. The targets display a wide range in luminosity and hardness. In particular, the significant presence of very bright and hard sources is atypical for X-ray surveys of OB stars. Several types of sources are identified. A subset of stars display the typical characteristics of O-stars, magnetic OB stars, or pre-main-sequence (PMS) objects: their Be nature does not seem to play an important role. However, another subset comprises γ Cas analogs, which are responsible for the luminous and hard detections. Our sample contains seven known γ Cas analogs, but we also identify eight new γ Cas analogs and one γ Cas candidate. This nearly doubles the sample of such stars.


2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S266) ◽  
pp. 470-473
Author(s):  
C. Martayan ◽  
D. Baade ◽  
Y. Frémat ◽  
J. Zorec

AbstractStar clusters are privileged laboratories for studying the evolution of massive stars (OB stars). One particularly interesting question concerns the phases during which the classical Be stars occur, which—unlike HAe/Be stars—are not pre-main-sequence objects, nor supergiants. Rather, they are extremely rapidly rotating B-type stars with a circumstellar decretion disk formed by episodic ejections of matter from the central star. To study the impact of mass, metallicity, and age on the Be phase, we observed Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) open clusters with two different techniques: (i) with the ESO–WFI in slitless mode, which allowed us to find the brighter Be and other emission-line stars in 84 SMC open clusters, and (ii) with the VLT–FLAMES multifiber spectrograph to determine accurately the evolutionary phases of Be stars in the Be-star-rich SMC open cluster NGC 330. Based on a comparison to the Milky Way, a model of Be stellar evolution, appearance as a function of metallicity and mass, and spectral type is developed, involving the fractional critical rotation rate as a key parameter.


1980 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 525-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore P. Snow

AbstractReviews of the mass-loss characteristics of OB stars have been published recently, and the present review therefore emphasizes the A and F stars and very recent results on O and B stars. For the F stars, chromospheric indicators are present in the form of emission lines, seen in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths. Winds are present in A supergiants, but not in main sequence stars, although at least a few of the latter are X-ray sources, indicating the possible existence of coronae. Most OB supergiants are X-ray sources as well, indicating, along with the presence of super-ionization, that these stars have coronae. On the main sequence, the O stars and some B stars (including Be stars in many cases) have mass loss with highly-ionized species in the wind. The winds in the O and B stars are commonly variable. The mass-loss rates do not show a simple dependence on luminosity, contrary to the predictions for radiatively-driven winds.


2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (S272) ◽  
pp. 433-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter De Cat ◽  
Katrien Uytterhoeven ◽  
Juan Gutiérrez-Soto ◽  
Pieter Degroote ◽  
Sergio Simón-Díaz

AbstractThe region of the hot end of the main-sequence is hosting pulsating stars of different types and flavours. Pulsations are not only observed for Slowly pulsating B stars (mid to late B-type stars; high order g-modes) and β Cephei stars (early B-type stars; low order p/g-modes) but are also causing variability in Be stars and OB-supergiants. In this review we give an overview of the asteroseismic observations that are currently available for these types of stars. The first asteroseismic results were solely based on ground-based observations. Recently, the arrival of space-based data gathered by space missions like most, corot and kepler has led to important discoveries for massive stars, highlighting their excellent asteroseismic potential. We show that, despite the unprecedented precision of the space-based data, there is still a clear need for ground-based follow-up observations.


2002 ◽  
Vol 185 ◽  
pp. 116-117
Author(s):  
D.H. McNamara

The δ Scuti stars are variables found in the instability strip above the zero-age main sequence. Radial and nonradial pulsation modes have been detected in these stars. The large-amplitude variables with asymmetric light curves are radial pulsators. The pulsation periods are found to be in the period range of 0.03 – 0.25 days. Generally, the light amplitudes are small (total range < 0.3 mag), but some fundamental-mode variables reach 0.70 mag. The majority of the variables have light amplitudes <0.10 mag. Population II δ Scuti variables are frequently called SX Phe stars. Many of these variables have been found in globular clusters, where they populate the blue-straggler domain of the color-magnitude diagrams.


2019 ◽  
Vol 630 ◽  
pp. A90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertil Pettersson ◽  
Bo Reipurth

A deep objective-prism survey for Hα emission stars towards the Canis Major star-forming clouds was performed. A total of 398 Hα emitters were detected, 353 of which are new detections. There is a strong concentration of these Hα emitters towards the molecular clouds surrounding the CMa OB1 association, and it is likely that these stars are young stellar objects recently born in the clouds. An additional population of Hα emitters is scattered all across the region, and probably includes unrelated foreground dMe stars and background Be stars. About 90% of the Hα emitters are detected by WISE, of which 75% was detected with usable photometry. When plotted in a WISE colour–colour diagram it appears that the majority are Class II YSOs. Coordinates and finding charts are provided for all the new stars, and coordinates for all the detections. We searched the Gaia-DR2 catalogue and from 334 Hα emission stars with useful parallaxes, we selected a subset of 98 stars that have parallax errors of less than 20% and nominal distances in the interval 1050 to 1350 pc that surrounds a strong peak at 1185 pc in the distance distribution. Similarly, Gaia distances were obtained for 51 OB-stars located towards Canis Major and selected with the same parallax errors as the Hα stars. We find a median distance for the OB stars of 1182 pc, in excellent correspondence with the distance from the Hα stars. Two known runaway stars are confirmed as members of the association. Finally, two new Herbig-Haro objects are identified.


2019 ◽  
Vol 627 ◽  
pp. A135 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Bhardwaj ◽  
N. Panwar ◽  
G. J. Herczeg ◽  
W. P. Chen ◽  
H. P. Singh

Context. Pre-main-sequence variability characteristics can be used to probe the physical processes leading to the formation and initial evolution of both stars and planets. Aims. The photometric variability of pre-main-sequence stars is studied at optical wavelengths to explore star–disk interactions, accretion, spots, and other physical mechanisms associated with young stellar objects. Methods. We observed a field of 16′ × 16′ in the star-forming region Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) at BVRI wavelengths for 90 nights spread over one year in 2012−2013. More than 250 epochs in the VRI bands are used to identify and classify variables up to V ∼ 21 mag. Their physical association with the cluster IC 5070 is established based on the parallaxes and proper motions from the Gaia second data release (DR2). Multiwavelength photometric data are used to estimate physical parameters based on the isochrone fitting and spectral energy distributions. Results. We present a catalog of optical time-series photometry with periods, mean magnitudes, and classifications for 95 variable stars including 67 pre-main-sequence variables towards star-forming region IC 5070. The pre-main-sequence variables are further classified as candidate classical T Tauri and weak-line T Tauri stars based on their light curve variations and the locations on the color-color and color-magnitude diagrams using optical and infrared data together with Gaia DR2 astrometry. Classical T Tauri stars display variability amplitudes up to three times the maximum fluctuation in disk-free weak-line T Tauri stars, which show strong periodic variations. Short-term variability is missed in our photometry within single nights. Several classical T Tauri stars display long-lasting (≥10 days) single or multiple fading and brightening events of up to two magnitudes at optical wavelengths. The typical mass and age of the pre-main-sequence variables from the isochrone fitting and spectral energy distributions are estimated to be ≤1 M⊙ and ∼2 Myr, respectively. We do not find any correlation between the optical amplitudes or periods with the physical parameters (mass and age) of pre-main-sequence stars. Conclusions. The low-mass pre-main-sequence stars in the Pelican Nebula region display distinct variability and color trends and nearly 30% of the variables exhibit strong periodic signatures attributed to cold spot modulations. In the case of accretion bursts and extinction events, the average amplitudes are larger than one magnitude at optical wavelengths. These optical magnitude fluctuations are stable on a timescale of one year.


2018 ◽  
Vol 615 ◽  
pp. L5 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Irrgang ◽  
S. Kreuzer ◽  
U. Heber ◽  
W. Brown

Context. Hypervelocity stars (HVSs) travel so fast that they may leave the Galaxy. The tidal disruption of a binary system by the supermassive black hole in the Galactic center is widely assumed to be their ejection mechanism. Aims. To test the hypothesis of an origin in the Galactic center using kinematic investigations, the current space velocities of the HVSs need to be determined. With the advent of Gaia’s second data release, accurate radial velocities from spectroscopy are complemented by proper motion measurements of unprecedented quality. Based on a new spectroscopic analysis method, we provide revised distances and stellar ages, both of which are crucial to unravel the nature of the HVSs. Methods. We reanalyzed low-resolution optical spectra of 14 HVSs from the MMT HVS survey using a new grid of synthetic spectra, which account for deviations from local thermodynamic equilibrium, to derive effective temperatures, surface gravities, radial velocities, and projected rotational velocities. Stellar masses, radii, and ages were then determined by comparison with stellar evolutionary models that account for rotation. Finally, these results were combined with photometric measurements to obtain spectroscopic distances. Results. The resulting atmospheric parameters are consistent with those of main sequence stars with masses in the range 2.5–5.0 M⊙. The majority of the stars rotate at fast speeds, providing further evidence for their main sequence nature. Stellar ages range from 90 to 400 Myr and distances (with typical 1σ-uncertainties of about 10–15%) from 30 to 100 kpc. Except for one object (B 711), which we reclassify as A-type star, all stars are of spectral type B. Conclusions. The spectroscopic distances and stellar ages derived here are key ingredients for upcoming kinematic studies of HVSs based on Gaia proper motions.


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