2MASS observations of Be stars

A catalogue of almost all known Galactic Be stars in the 2MASS database (1185 in total) and in the MSX database (225 in total) is presented in this paper. From the color-color diagrams and spectral indexes, it is found that the IR excesses for many samples are due to free-free and free-bound emission from the ionized material around a Be star as suggested previously and that the mean spectral index derived for the samples is 1.50 +/- 0.34 between J to K bands and 1.14 +/- 0.42 between K to A bands, respectively. However, it is also found that there are eight Be stars that have large near infrared excess emission with spectral index values outside the range expected for free-free and free-bound emission. This is likely attributed to circumstellar dust emission. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.