THE Be STAR SPECTRA (BeSS) DATABASE

Be stars vary on many timescales, from hours to decades. A long time base of observations to analyze certain phenomena in these stars is therefore necessary. Collecting all existing and future Be star spectra into one database has thus emerged as an important tool for the Be star community. Moreover, for statistical studies, it is useful to have centralized information on all known Be stars via an up-to-date catalog. These two goals are what the Be Star Spectra (BeSS, http://basebe.obspm.fr) database proposes to achieve. The database contains an as-complete-as-possible catalog of known Be stars with stellar parameters, as well as spectra of Be stars from all origins (any wavelength, any epoch, any resolution, etc.). It currently contains over 54,000 spectra of more than 600 different Be stars among the similar to 2000 Be stars in the catalog. A user can access and query this database to retrieve information on Be stars or spectra. Registered members can also upload spectra to enrich the database. Spectra obtained by professional as well as amateur astronomers are individually validated in terms of format and science before being included in BeSS. In this paper, we present the database itself as well as examples of the use of BeSS data in terms of statistics and the study of individual stars.