We report the first systematic study to identify and characterize a sample of classical Ae stars in the Galaxy. The spectra of these stars were retrieved from the A-star catalogue using the Large sky Area Multi-Object fibre Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) survey. We identified the emission-line stars in this catalogue from which 159 are confirmed as classical Ae stars. This increases the sample of known classical Ae stars by about nine times from the previously identified 21 stars. The evolutionary phase of classical Ae stars in this study is confirmed from the relatively small mid- and far-infrared excess and from their location in the optical colour–magnitude diagram. We estimated the spectral type using MILES spectral templates and identified classical Ae stars beyond A3, for the first time. The prominent emission lines in the spectra within the wavelength range 3700–9000 Å are identified and compared with the features present in classical Be stars. The H α emission strength of the stars in our sample show a steady decrease from late-B type to Ae stars, suggesting that the disc size may be dependent on the spectral type. Interestingly, we noticed emission lines of Fe ii, O i, and Paschen series in the spectrum of some classical Ae stars. These lines are supposed to fade out by late B-type and should not be present in Ae stars. Further studies, including spectra with better resolution, is needed to correlate these results with the rotation rates of classical Ae stars.

We present a catalog of 3339 hot emission-line stars (ELSs) identified from 451 695 O, B and A type spectra, provided by LAMOST Data Release 5 (DR5). We developed an automated Python routine that identified 5437 spectra having a peak between 6561 and 6568 Å. False detections and bad spectra were removed, leaving 4138 good emission-line spectra of 3339 unique ELSs. We re-estimated the spectral types of 3307 spectra as the LAMOST Stellar Parameter Pipeline (LASP) did not provide accurate spectral types for these emission-line spectra. As Herbig Ae/Be stars exhibit higher excess in near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths than classical Ae/Be stars, we relied on 2MASS and WISE photometry to distinguish them. Finally, we report 1089 classical Be, 233 classical Ae and 56 Herbig Ae/Be stars identified from LAMOST DR5. In addition, 928 B[em]/A[em] stars and 240 CAe/CBe potential candidates are identified. From our sample of 3339 hot ELSs, 2716 ELSs identified in this work do not have any record in the SIMBAD database and they can be considered as new detections. Identification of such a large homogeneous set of emission-line spectra will help the community study the emission phenomenon in detail without worrying about the inherent biases when compiling from various sources.

No abstract

In this paper we attempt to study an ongoing astrometry mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), named Gaia, whose aim is to make the largest and most precise three-dimensional map of our Galaxy. We present the scientific goals of Gaia and give a brief description of the spacecraft. We also present a preliminary analysis of comparing distance estimates of Be stars from the first Gaia data release, Gaia DR1, and Hipparcos mission. From our analysis, we confirm that Gaia stands out as a promising mission in terms of the distance measurements when compared to Hipparcos, particularly for distances greater than 1 kpc.