A study of the elements copper through uranium in Sirius A: Contributions from STIS and ground-based spectra

We determine abundances or upper limits for all of the 55 stable elements from copper to uranium for the A1 Vm star Sirius. The purpose of the study is to assemble the most complete picture of elemental abundances with the hope of revealing the chemical history of the brightest star in the sky, apart from the Sun. We also explore the relationship of this hot metallic-line (Am) star to its cooler congeners, as well as the hotter, weakly- or non-magnetic mercury-manganese (HgMn) stars. Our primary observational material consists of {\em Hubble Space Telescope} ($HST$) spectra taken with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) in the ASTRAL project. We have also used archival material from the %\citep/{ayr10}. $COPERNICUS$ satellite, and from the $HST$ Goddard High-Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS), as well as ground-based spectra from Furenlid, Westin, Kurucz, Wahlgren, and their coworkers, ESO spectra from the UVESPOP project, and NARVAL spectra retrieved from PolarBase. Our analysis has been primarily by spectral synthesis, and in this work we have had the great advantage of extensive atomic data unavailable to earlier workers. We find most abundances as well as upper limits range from 10 to 100 times above solar values. We see no indication of the huge abundance excesses of 1000 or more that occur among many chemically peculiar (CP) stars of the upper main sequence. The picture of Sirius as a hot Am star is reinforced.Comment: With 6 Figures and 4 Tables; accepted for publication in Ap

Weather in stellar atmosphere: the dynamics of mercury clouds in alpha Andromedae

The formation of long-lasting structures at the surfaces of stars is commonly ascribed to the action of strong magnetic fields. This paradigm is supported by observations of evolving cool spots in the Sun and active late-type stars, and stationary chemical spots in the early-type magnetic stars. However, results of our seven-year monitoring of mercury spots in non-magnetic early-type star alpha Andromedae show that the picture of magnetically-driven structure formation is fundamentally incomplete. Using an indirect stellar surface mapping technique, we construct a series of 2-D images of starspots and discover a secular evolution of the mercury cloud cover in this star. This remarkable structure formation process, observed for the first time in any star, is plausibly attributed to a non-equilibrium, dynamical evolution of the heavy-element clouds created by atomic diffusion and may have the same underlying physics as the weather patterns on terrestrial and giant planets.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures; to be published in Nature Physic

Stellar Kinematic Groups. II. Reexamination of the Membership, Activity, and Age of the Ursa Major Group

Utilizing Hipparcos parallaxes, original radial velocities and recent literature values, new Ca ii H and K emission measurements, literature-based abundance estimates, and updated photometry (including recent resolved measurements of close doubles), we revisit the Ursa Major moving group membership status of some 220 stars to produce a final clean list of nearly 60 assured members, based on kinematic and photomet-ric criteria. Scatter in the velocity dispersions and H-R diagram is correlated with trial activity-based mem-bership assignments, indicating the usefulness of criteria based on photometric and chromospheric emission to examine membership. Closer inspection, however, shows that activity is considerably more robust at excluding membership, failing to do so only for 15% of objects, perhaps considerably less. Our UMa mem-bers demonstrate nonzero vertex deviation in the Bottlinger diagram, behavior seen in older and recent stud-ies of nearby young disk stars and perhaps related to Galactic spiral structure. Comparison of isochrones and our final UMa group members indicates an age of 500 Æ100 Myr, some 200 Myr older than the canonically quoted UMa age. Our UMa kinematic=photometric members’ mean chromospheric emission levels, rota-tional velocities, and scatter therein are indistinguishable from values in the Hyades and smaller than those evinced by members of the younger Pleiades and M34 clusters, suggesting these characteristics decline rapidly with age over 200–500 Myr. None of our UMa members demonstrate inordinately low absolute values of chromospheric emission, but several may show residual fluxes a factor of !2 below a Hyades-defined lower envelope. If one defines a Maunder-like minimum in a relative sense, then the UMa results may suggest that solar-type stars spend 10% of their entire main-sequence lives in periods of precipitously low activity, which is consistent with estimates from older field stars. As related asides, we note six evolved stars (among our UMa nonmembers) with distinctive kinematics that lie along a 2 Gyr isochrone and appear to be late-type counterparts to disk F stars defining intermediate-age star streams in previous studies, identify a small num-ber of potentially very young but isolated field stars, note that active stars (whether UMa members or not) in our sample lie very close to the solar composition zero-age main sequence, unlike Hipparcos-based positions in the H-R diagram of Pleiades dwarfs, and argue that some extant transformations of activity indices are not adequate for cool dwarfs, for which Ca ii infrared triplet emission seems to be a better proxy than H-based values for Ca ii H and K indices

Elemental abundance analyses with DAO spectrograms. XXXVIII. The SB2 stars HR 104 (A2 V) and \u3b8 Aql (B9.5 III)

The study of the elemental abundances of double-lined spectroscopic binaries should provide information on the chemical differentiation of a once uniform prestellar nebula. To determine the effective temperatures and surface gravities of the primary and secondary stellar components of HR 104 and \u3b8 Aql, we used parameters derived from their orbital analyses and the requirement of equal abundances derived from Fe I and Fe II lines. For constraints we had optical region spectrophotometry for \u3b8 Aql and the large equivalent width ratios for the many spectral metal lines which were produced in both stellar atmospheres for HR 104. Since the primary stars were much brighter than the secondary stars, the abundances are considerably better determined for the primary stars. For HR 104 A we found T<inf>eff</inf> = 9875 K, log g = 4:26, and \u3be = 1:7 km s 121; for HR 104 B T<inf>eff</inf> = 7200 K, log g = 4:26, and \u3be = 0:6 km s 121; for \u3b8 Aql A T<inf>eff</inf> = 10400 K, log = 3:63, and \u3be = 0:3 km s 121; and for \u3b8 Aql B Teff = 10250 K, log = 4:20, and \u3be = 1:9 km s 121. The abundances of HR 104 A, HR 104 B, and \u3b8 Aql A are best described as the solar pattern. Those of \u3b8 Aql B suggest a weak nonmagnetic CP star pattern. While there is no trace of the Hg II 3984 line for \u3b8 Aql, the most extreme observed abundance anomalies for the secondary are those of Ca, V, Mn, and Ni. Further study of this hot marginal Am star could provide insights into the origin of the nonsolar chemical abundances.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye