| Type |
Conference Paper |
| Names |
Zachary H. Draper, J. P. Wisniewski, K. Bjorkman, X. Haubois, A. C. Carciofi, J. E. Bjorkman, M. R. Meade |
| Proceedings Title |
Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society |
| Conference Name |
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #344.19 |
| Volume |
219 |
| Date |
January 1, 2012 |
| URL |
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012AAS...21934419D |
| Library Catalog |
NASA ADS |
| Abstract |
Classical Be stars are middle-aged, massive B-class stars which rotate
rapidly near their critical rate. Through a yet unknown mechanism
material is ejected from the star into a circumstellar disk. The density
distribution of material within these disks can be diagnosed by studying
the polarization signature. A survey of Classical Be stars was conducted
by the Pine Bluff Observatory (PBO) using the HPOL instrument from 1989
to 2004, which cataloged optical spectropolarimetry for 75 Be stars.
This survey was further supplemented with UV spectropolarimetry from the
WUPPE instrument aboard the Astro-1 and Astro-2 Space Shuttle missions.
We have developed an IDL-based pipeline to remove interstellar
polarization caused by dust along the line of sight to each star for a
subset of the survey, thereby allowing us to measure the intrinsic
polarization variations due to changes within the disk. We apply a
newly-developed diagnostic of the Balmer jump vs V-band polarization to
help us better understand the mechanism(s) which causes these stars to
form circumstellar disks. We also discuss constraints on axial
precession and complex density morphologies. |