A New Outburst in the Be star HD 6226 with upcoming HST observations

ATel #11367; Noel D. Richardson (University of Toledo), S. Drew Chojnowski (APO and NMSU), Joshua D. Thomas (Clarkson University), John P. Wisniewski (University of Oklahoma), Jon E. Bjorkman (University of Toledo), Karen S. Bjorkman (University of Toledo), Jesica Trucks (University of Toledo), Nolan Habel (University of Toledo)
on 27 Feb 2018; 22:01 UT
Credential Certification: Noel Richardson (noel.richardson@UToledo.edu)

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Our team has led a large effort to observe the Classical Be star HD6226 since last August when the amateur spectroscopist Olivier Thizy discovered an outburst corresponding to an epoch where the star builds a decretion disk. The star was previously analyzed by Bozic et al. (2004) who found the star to have quasi-periodic outbursts. // We have collected over 200 spectra of the outburst that occurred in the time span of August-October 2017, and had successfully proposed to obtain ultraviolet spectra with the Hubble Space Telescope in order to constrain the fundamental parameters of this star, allowing us to build better models of the star+disk system. The UV spectra are scheduled for March 5, 2018 at 7:30-10:00 UT. In order to supplement these data, we obtained recent optical spectroscopy with the APO 3.5 m telescope and echelle spectrograph. Our data showed a large emission feature in the H-alpha profile indicating that the star began building a disk since the last observation in the BeSS database on 2018 January 24.// Followup spectroscopy was obtained at both the Clarkson University Reynolds Observatory and the University of Toledo's Ritter Observatory on February 27, 2018 UT. The spectra were taken within a few hours of each other with the 0.3 m telescope at Clarkson and an LHIRES III spectrograph equipped with a 1200 grooves/mm grating and with the 1 m telescope at Ritter Observatory with a 1200 grooves/mm grating on a fiber-fed spectrograph. The followup spectroscopy confirm the emission as well as show that the gas moved in the ~day since the APO data were taken. Further reductions are necessary to quantify the changes. // We request further observations of the optical spectrum to quantify this emission episode and disk for modeling purposes. Further, near-infrared observations would help to measure the free-free excess from the disk. Past observations have shown that the star varies in optical light during these outbursts, so optical photometry would be beneficial. //