The Stellar Composition of the Star Formation Region CMa R1. II. Spectroscopic and Photometric Observations of 9 Young Stars

We present new high and low resolution spectroscopic and photometric data of nine members of the young association CMa R1. All the stars have circumstellar dust at some distance as could be expected from their association with reflection nebulosity. Four stars (HD 52721, HD 53367, LkHalpha 220 and LkHalpha 218) show Halpha emission and we argue that they are Herbig Be stars with discs. Our photometric and spectroscopic observations on these stars reveal new characteristics of their variability. We present first interpretations of the variability of HD 52721, HD 53367 and the two LkHalpha stars in terms of a partially eclipsing binary, a magnetic activity cycle and circumstellar dust variations, respectively. The remaining five stars show no clear indications of Halpha emission in their spectra, although their spectral types and ages are comparable with those of HD 52721 and HD 53367. This indicates that the presence of a disc around a star in CMa R1 may depend on the environment of the star. In particular we find that all Halpha emission stars are located at or outside the arc-shaped border of the H II region, which suggests that the stars inside the arc have lost their discs through evaporation by UV photons from nearby O stars, or from the nearby (< 25 pc) supernova, about 1 Myr ago.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, accepted by MNRA

The Stellar Composition of the Star Formation Region CMa R1 -- III. A new outburst of the Be star component in Z CMa

We report on a recent event in which, after more than a decade of slowly fading, the visual brightness of the massive young binary Z CMa suddenly started to rise by about 1 magnitude in December 1999, followed by a rapid decline to its previous brightness over the next six months. This behaviour is similar to that exhibited by this system around its eruption in February 1987. A comparison of the intrinsic luminosities of the system with recent evolutionary calculations shows that Z CMa may consist of a 16 M_sun B0 IIIe primary star and a ~ 3 M_sun FUOr secondary with a common age of ~ 3 x 10^5 yr. We also compare new high-resolution spectra obtained in Jan. and Feb. 2000, during the recent rise in brightness, with archive data from 1991 and 1996. The spectra are rich in emission lines, which originate from the envelope of the early B-type primary star. The strength of these emission lines increased strongly with the brightness of Z CMa. We interpret the collected spectral data in terms of an accretion disc with atmosphere around the Herbig B0e component of Z CMa, which has expanded during the outbursts of 1987 and 2000. A high resolution profile of the 6300 A [O I] emission line, obtained by us in March 2002 shows an increase in flux and a prominent blue shoulder to the feature extending to ~ -700 km/s, which was much fainter in the pre-outburst spectra. We propose that this change in profile is a result of a strong change in the collimation of a jet, as a result of the outburst at the start of this century.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

A Photometric Catalogue of Southern Emission-Line Stars

We present a catalogue of previously unpublished optical and infrared photometry for a sample of 162 emission-line objects and shell stars visible from the southern hemisphere. The data were obtained between 1978 and 1997 in the Walraven (WULBV), Johnson/Cousins (UBV(RI)_c) and ESO and SAAO near-infrared (JHKLM) photometric systems. Most of the observed objects are Herbig Ae/Be (HAeBe) stars or HAeBe candidates appearing in the list of HAeBe candidates of Th\'e et al. (1994), although several B[e] stars, LBVs and T Tauri are also included in our sample. For many of the stars the data presented here are the first photo-electric measurements in the literature. The resulting catalogue consists of 1809 photometric measurements. Optical variability was detected in 66 out of the 116 sources that were observed more than once. 15 out of the 50 stars observed multiple times in the infrared showed variability at 2.2 microns (K band).Comment: 42 pages, no figures, to appear in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Modeling of PMS Ae/Fe stars using UV spectra

Context.Spectral classification of AeFe stars, based on visual observations, may lead to ambiguous conclusions. Aims. We aim to reduce these ambiguities by using UV spectra for the classification of these stars, because the rise of the continuum in the UV is highly sensitive to the stellar spectral type of A/F-type stars. Methods. We analyse the low-resolution UV spectra in terms of a 3-component model, that consists of spectra of a central star, of an optically-thick accretion disc, and of a boundary-layer between the disc and star. The disc-component was calculated as a juxtaposition of Planck spectra, while the 2 other components were simulated by the low-resolution UV spectra of well-classified standard stars (taken from the IUE spectral atlases). The hot boundary-layer shows strong similarities to the spectra of late-B type supergiants (see Appendix A). Results. We modeled the low-resolution UV spectra of 37 AeFe stars. Each spectral match provides 8 model parameters: spectral type and luminosity-class of photosphere and boundary-layer, temperature and width of the boundary-layer, disc-inclination and circumstellar extinction. From the results of these analyses, combined with available theoretical PMS evolutionary tracks, we could estimate their masses and ages and derive their mass-accretion rates. For a number of analysed PMS stars we calculated the corresponding SEDs and compared these with the observed SEDs. Conclusions. All stars (except βPic) show indications of accretion, that affect the resulting spectral type of the stellar photosphere. Formerly this led to ambiguities in classificaton of PMS stars as the boundary-layer was not taken into consideration. We give evidence for an increase of the mass-accretion rate with stellar mass and for a decreases of this rate with stellar age