spectro-aras.com

It's been a while since my last update, but TESS is currently observing Be stars in the northern hemisphere. I've compiled a target list, sorted according to when TESS is observing various fields in this 'cycle 5' https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RjCObOwWctgK7C3qY2Z2okBzQuvdbds5hGHAH8--4gY/ed...

Small update: 12 Vul is definitely ejecting material now. Comparing a spectrum from today (the reddest line w/ strongest emission) vs. yesterday, Halpha emission has clearly increased, and the red/blue asymmetry is varying (the ejected material so far is not azimuthally symmetric). I have some more ...

While I'm at it... The bright Be star and member of the Pleiades, Merope (= 23 Tau), might be a nice target to monitor closely. In the below plot made from ~25 years of BeSS spectra, you can see that the emission level has been fading since ~1995. I observed Merope a few days ago and the Halpha doub...

Quick update on 12 Vul. TESS is observing this Be star from July 23 until Aug. 20. I got a spectrum a few minutes ago (JD = 2459437.2) that shows Halpha at clearly higher emission levels compared to 3 days ago, so it is currently in the process of building up a disk (or at least recently ejected mat...

Hi everyone, TESS is returning to the northern hemisphere in a few days (June 24 2021) where the satellite will continue to observe large parts of the northern sky for the next 15 months. Here is a spreadsheet that lists the classical Be stars that will be observed photometrically by TESS: https://d...

Hi Jack, Weird feature. Do you think it is real (in the sense that it is astrophysical and not some detector artifact)? I took spectra of gamma Cas on the night of Jan 15 (UT time ~01:30 Jan 16) and there is no sign of this feature in my sequence of 13 exposures. There shouldn't be any photospheric ...

Hi Ernst, I'm looking ahead at interesting Be star targets that are being observed by TESS over the next ~1.5 years. 28 Tau ( = Pleione) is one of them- it is being observed by TESS for three months between 2021-Aug-20 - 2021-Nov-06. I believe this window also includes a periastron passage. Going by...

Hi all, Just a short and quick update. I'm now processing the TESS data from last year (TESS yr 2; July 2019 - July 2020), and including the relevant BeSS/ARAS spectra whenever possible. Presently I'm focusing on 'flicker' stars, or stars that experience short-lived (~days) mass ejection. This plot ...

Hi Ernst, Thanks for the update and for reminding me about that paper. I've been observing pi Aqr from about June - November 2020 with spectroscopy, but I've mostly waited on analyzing the data until space photometry from the BRITE satellites becomes available for pi Aqr over the same observing base...

Hi Ernst, Really interesting development. I know we emailed a bit about this, so hopefully you don't mind me posting here too. Hydrodynamical models predict that binary-induced disk oscillations produce m = 2 density waves, illustrated in this plot: Chojnowski_et-al_2018.png Fig. from 2018ApJ...865....