New insights on Be shell stars from modelling their Hα emission profiles

Abstract

Be shell stars are believed to be ordinary Be stars seen edge-on, which makes them particularly desirable objects for study since the uncertainty in the inclination of the rotation axis is largely eliminated. We have recently modelled high resolution Hα spectroscopic observations for eight Be shell stars, using the non-local thermodynamical equilibrium radiative transfer codeBedisk(Sigut & Jones 2007) and the new spectral synthesis packageBeray(Sigut 2011). Generally, we confirm that these systems are oriented at high inclination angles, although we find that they are not necessarily as close to edge-on as initially expected.