4.7 Article

Does rotation alone determine whether an A-type star's spectrum is abnormal or normal?

Journal

ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 544, Issue 2, Pages 933-936

Publisher

UNIV CHICAGO PRESS
DOI: 10.1086/317257

Keywords

binaries : spectroscopic; diffusion; stars : peculiar; stars : rotation

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As noted by Abt & Morrell, virtually all of the metallic line (Am) and peculiar A (Ap) stars have equatorial rotational velocities less than 120 km s(-1), and most of the normal AO-FO main-sequence stars have equatorial rotational velocities greater than 120 km s(-1). However, at all spectral types there are some (10%-20%) of the normal stars that have smaller rotational velocities. If this overlap is real, then a star's rotational velocity is insufficient to explain its abnormal or normal spectra. We studied the A5-F0 and A2-A4 stars and found in both cases that there are stars classified as normal that have unusually weak Ca rr K lines and/or that occur in short-period binaries. Therefore, the overlap seems to be due to undetected marginal abnormal stars. Among the A0-A1 stars we find that our inability to distinguish consistently the class IV from the class V stars can explain the overlap because the class IV stars have lower rotational velocities than class V stars. We conclude from statistical arguments that rotation alone can explain the appearance of an A star as either abnormal or normal.

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