Spectrography - Be stars - OHP 2009 (french here) (Home)

During the spectro "star-party" organized at the Haute-Provence Observatory, about 50+ Be Stars at magnitude inferior to 6 was conducted over 9 nights. The Be stars list was obtained from the ArasBeAM site, in linkage with the BeSS database of the Paris-Meudon observatory (GEPI team). The OHP site, its friendly open field between the Jean-Perrin's house and the T120 telescope dome, a fantastic weather during the few days before and after the workshop have contributed to make this campaign a real success.

Instrumentation

I used a 120cm (5") refractor Astrophysic 120ED, on a GP-DX german equatorial mount GP-DX, with a FS2 motorization system. The spectrograph is a Lhires3 with a 1200l/mm grating. The acquisition camera is a KAF400 Audine, without shutter, with USB interface Quick-Audine. The guiding camera on the spectro slit is a WATEC 120N associated to a video grabber GrabbX. The acquisition PC is running XP, to maintain compatibility with the grabber's driver. Pisco was the software to acquire images with the USB Audine, and Aude-LA to autoguide on the video signal. Both softwares were running on the same PC.

The USB connexions of the grabber, Audine and the serial-to-parallel link to drive the mount are connected to an usb hub. This hub is linked to the PC with an usb extender. This allows keeping the hub under the mount without cable length issues for cameras. If one cable has to be disconnect, it is good to remember which position on the hub it was attached to. Changing port position will force to relaod the drivers.

Astrophysic 120ED on GP-DX with LhiresIII, audine camera and watec

Be stars observation

Over 9 nights of observation, a total of 52 spectra was acquired, on 50 different Be Stars.

Over those 50 stars, 1 "outburst" has been detected and evolution on 8 stars were visible. 

• HD22780 - outburst detection- RA 03h 41m 07.86s DEC 37° 34" 48.71' m=5.541 type spectral B7Vne - Vsini:285km/s

• 11 cam - decrease of the H-alpha emission line intensity - RA 05h 06m 08.45s DEC 58° 58" 20.54' m=5.03 type spectral B2.5Ve Vsini=95km/s

• 25 Vul - decrease of the H-alpha emission line intensity - RA 20h 22m 03.43s DEC 24° 26" 45.96' m=5.519 type spectral B8IIIne vsini=160km/s

• 59 Cyg - decrease of the H-alpha emission line intensity on the blue wing - RA 20h 59m 49.56s DEC 47° 31" 15.42" m=4.74 type spectral B1.5Vnne Vsini=379km/s

• 66 Oph - decrease of the H-alpha emission line intensity - RA 18h 00m 15.80s DEC 04° 22" 07.02' m=4.784 type spectral B2Ve vsini=262km/s

• Pi Aqr - decrease of the H-alpha emission line intensity - RA 22h 25m 16.62s DEC 01° 22" 38.64' m=4.794 type spectral B1Ve vsini=230km/s

• EW Lac - Evolution of the V/R ratio of H-alpha - RA 22h 57m 04.50s DEC 48° 41" 02.65' m=5.42 type spectral B3IVpe vsini=265km/s

• 25 Ori - Evolution of the V/R ratio of H-alpha - RA 05h 24m 44.83s DEC 01° 50" 47.20' m=4.873 type spectral B1Vpe vsini=263km/s

• BK Cam - Evolution of the V/R ratio of H-alpha - RA 03h 19m 59.27s DEC 65° 39" 08.25" m=4.728 type spectral B2.5Vne vsini=328km/s