Aims. The position of B[e] stars in the upper left part of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram creates a quandary. Are these stars young stars evolving onto the main sequence or old stars that are evolving off of it? Spectral characteristics suggest that B[e] stars can be placed into five subclasses and are not a homogeneous set. Such sub-classification is believed to coincide with varying origins ...

We present HST/STIS Ultraviolet spectra of the six known Ofpe/WN9 stars (“slash stars”) in M 33. These stars were selected for showing the characteristics of the Ofpe/WN9 class from previous optical ground-based spectroscopy. The UV spectra are rich in wind lines, whose strength and terminal velocity vary greatly among our target sample. We analyse the STIS spectra with non-LTE, line blanketed,...

Through time-series CCD photometry of the globular cluster NGC 5466, we have detected nine SX Phoenicis stars including three new ones. All the SX Phoenicis stars are located in the blue straggler region in the color-magnitude diagram of NGC 5466. Five of them show clearly double-radial mode features, the periods of which are well consistent with the theoretical ratio of the first overtone mode...

We report the discovery of additional hot and massive stars in the cluster surrounding the soft gamma repeater SGR 1806−20, based upon UKIRT and Keck near-infrared spectroscopy. Of the newly identified stars, three are Wolf-Rayet stars of types WC8, WN6, and WN7, and a fourth star is an OB supergiant. These three stars, along with four previously discovered, imply a cluster age of∼3.04.5 Myr, b...

We recently discovered a large number of highly active Be stars in the open cluster NGC 3766, making it an excellent location to study the formation mechanism of Be star disks. To explore whether similar disk appearances and/or disappearances are common among the Be stars in other open clusters, we present here multiple epochs of Hα spectroscopy for 296 stars in eight open clusters. We identify...

This paper continues the analysis of faint high latitude B stars from Martin (2004). Here we analyze the kinematics of the stars and combine them with the abundance information from the first paper to classify each one. The sample contains 31 Population I runaways, fifteen old evolved stars (including five BHB stars, three post-HB stars, a pulsating helium dwarf, and six stars of ambiguous clas...

Most stars previously identified as Maunder minimum stars are old stars evolved off of the main sequence. Analysis of activity measurements from the California and Carnegie Planet Search program stars and Hipparcos parallaxes implies that the canonical age-chromospheric activity relation breaks down for stars older than ∼ 6 Gyr when activity is calculated from Mount Wilson S values. Stars only ...

We report the detection and monitoring of transient substructures in the radiation-driven winds of five massive, hot stars in different evolutionary stages. Clumping in the winds of these stars shows up as variable, narrow subpeaks superposed on their wide, wind-broadened (optical) emission lines. Similar patterns of emission-line profile variations are detected in the Of stars ζ Puppis and HD9...

We present theoretical models of rotating low mass stars (0.1 1.0 M⊙ ) to demonstrate the effect of rotation on the effective temperature and luminosity of stars. The range of rotation rates in our models corresponds to the observed rotation rates in young low mass stars. Rotation lowers the effective temperature and luminosity of the models relative to standard models of the same mass and comp...

We report on neon abundances derived from Spitzer high resolution spectral data of eight Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars using the forbidden line of [Ne III] 15.56 microns. Our targets include four WN stars of subtypes 4–7, and four WC stars of subtypes 4–7. We derive ion fraction abundances γ of Ne for the winds of each star. The ion fraction abundance is a product of the ionization fraction Qi in stage...