Be Stars and the Properties that Lead to Building and Losing Disks
Faculty Mentor Name
Noel Richardson
Format Preference
Poster
Abstract
Be stars are stars of spectral type B (out of O, B, A, F, G, K, M spectral classes) with emission lines present (the ‘e’ in Be). The history of Be stars is relatively young with the first observation made in 1866 by Father A. Secchi, but our understanding of Be stars has started to grow much more rapidly in the past three or four decades. As of 2013, the still widely used definition of Be stars was: “A non-supergiant B star whose spectrum has, or had at some time, one or more Balmer lines in emission.” (Rivinius, 2013). However, the most interesting aspect of Be stars isn’t included explicitly in the definition above. For some reason still being researched, Be stars tend to release gaseous material that forms into a disk orbiting the star. So far, the team has been analyzing data from two Be stars known as QR Vul and Lambda Pavonis. Sola Nova was assigned Lambda Pavonis while Sami Garcia and Tara Lucas were assigned QR Vul. The goal of this research is to properly reduce and analyze data collected for each Be star by developing code for each with the help of Dr. Noel Richardson and alumni Clarissa Pavao. Some code has already been developed for Lambda Pavonis, and plots of the velocity curves have been generated. New code is being developed that should describe how the star is emitting material through time, known as Time Series Analysis, and can be used to determine a period for the star's rotation. As for QR Vul, code is still a work in progress and will be able to produce plots that show potential outbursts and pulsation periods once it is properly running. An excel sheet has been created for to keep track of emission lines Halpha and Hbeta and will be used to further analyze QR Vul.
Be Stars and the Properties that Lead to Building and Losing Disks
Be stars are stars of spectral type B (out of O, B, A, F, G, K, M spectral classes) with emission lines present (the ‘e’ in Be). The history of Be stars is relatively young with the first observation made in 1866 by Father A. Secchi, but our understanding of Be stars has started to grow much more rapidly in the past three or four decades. As of 2013, the still widely used definition of Be stars was: “A non-supergiant B star whose spectrum has, or had at some time, one or more Balmer lines in emission.” (Rivinius, 2013). However, the most interesting aspect of Be stars isn’t included explicitly in the definition above. For some reason still being researched, Be stars tend to release gaseous material that forms into a disk orbiting the star. So far, the team has been analyzing data from two Be stars known as QR Vul and Lambda Pavonis. Sola Nova was assigned Lambda Pavonis while Sami Garcia and Tara Lucas were assigned QR Vul. The goal of this research is to properly reduce and analyze data collected for each Be star by developing code for each with the help of Dr. Noel Richardson and alumni Clarissa Pavao. Some code has already been developed for Lambda Pavonis, and plots of the velocity curves have been generated. New code is being developed that should describe how the star is emitting material through time, known as Time Series Analysis, and can be used to determine a period for the star's rotation. As for QR Vul, code is still a work in progress and will be able to produce plots that show potential outbursts and pulsation periods once it is properly running. An excel sheet has been created for to keep track of emission lines Halpha and Hbeta and will be used to further analyze QR Vul.