Spectral Energy Distributions of Be and Other Massive Stars

TL;DR

This paper provides spectrophotometric data for Be and massive stars to model their circumstellar gas structures, revealing correlations between IR excess and emission line strengths.

Contribution

It offers new spectrophotometric measurements and insights into the relationship between IR excess and emission lines in Be star disks.

Findings

IR excess correlates with hydrogen emission line strength

Near-IR continuum and line fluxes originate in the inner disk region

Spectrophotometric data supports modeling of circumstellar gas structure

Abstract

We present spectrophotometric data from 0.4 to 4.2 microns for bright, northern sky, Be stars and several other types of massive stars. Our goal is to use these data with ongoing, high angular resolution, interferometric observations to model the density structure and sky orientation of the gas surrounding these stars. We also present a montage of the H-alpha and near-infrared emission lines that form in Be star disks. We find that a simplified measurement of the IR excess flux appears to be correlated with the strength of emission lines from high level transitions of hydrogen. This suggests that the near-IR continuum and upper level line fluxes both form in the inner part of the disk, close to the star.