SECOND ANNOUNCEMENT

IAUC No. 175
``The Be Phenomenon in Early-Type Stars''

Scientific Rationale:

Although Be stars have been recognized for over a century, the cause of their irregular episodes of enhanced mass loss, ``the Be phenomenon,'' remains mysterious. These stars show varying degrees of similarities to the Oe, Wolf-Rayet, B supergiant, Bp, and B[e] variables. The origin of variability on practically every timescale for Be and related stars remains elusive. Evidence is accumulating that no single cause is capable of producing the emission in all or even most Be stars. Thus, an understanding of the observed phenomena necessitates the merging of several subdisciplines in observations (multi-wavelength and coverage in time) and theory (radiative transfer, hydrodynamics, theory of pulsations and magnetic field generation, evolution of binary systems). The Alicante conference will bring together experts in all of these areas. We seek to place the Be phenomenon into a broad context of stellar activity and so will include experts from the cool-star, high energy, and interacting binaries.

The topics for this colloquium include:

• definitions and background of the Be phenomenon
• new relevant missions and technologies
• temporal variability (periodic and nonperiodic)
• winds and circumstellar environment
• interacting Be binary stars

SPECIAL NOTICE: Special Splinter session on the JPL Deep Space-3 (interferometry) mission in honour of Profs. A. Slettebak and M. Jaschek

Registration fee: about $110
SOC Contact: Myron Smith (msmith@nebula.gsfc.nasa.gov)
LOC Contact: Juan Fabregat (juan@pleione.uv.es)

Deadlines:

• Abstracts (proposed oral papers): 31 March
• Abstracts (posters): 15 May
• Registration: 15 May

Please contact the LOC at http://www.bestars.ua.es/be99/ for further details.

Myron A. Smith