The Be Star Newsletter, Volume 37 - September 2004

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Pi Aqr returns to emission state - building a disk? Karen Bjorkman Ritter Observatory, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606 email:  karen@astro.utoledo.edu Received: September 21, 2004 After a long period of quiescence, the Be star pi Aqr has returned to an H-alpha emission state. Sometime between Oct 2003 and June 2004 (while the star was behind the sun, naturally...) the emission resumed, and the polarization has also shown a sharp increase. We are monitoring the star spectroscopically from Ritter Observatory and polarimetrically from Pine Bluff Observatory. We would encourage anyone observing Be stars to put pi Aqr back on their regular observing list, as this may be a wonderful opportunity to observe the process of disk build-up. I would appreciate any information that anyone has about the state of pi Aqr between Oct 2003 and June 2004, and would also be pleased to learn of any other observations that people are making. Thanks, Karen Bjorkman karen@astro.utoledo.edu