The Be Star Newsletter, Volume 38 - November 2005

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A new and rapidly developing emission-line phase of HD 6226 detected Miroslav Slechta1, Daniela Korcakova1, and Petr Harmanec2,1 1 Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences, CZ-251 65 Ondrejov, Czech Republic; email:  slechta@sunstel.asu.cas.cz 2 Astronomical Institute of the Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, V Holesovickach 2, CZ-180 00 Praha 8, Czech Republic Received: Nov 3, 2005;  Accepted: Nov 4, 2005 The Be star HD 6226 (SAO 36891, BD+46°245, R.A.2000=01:03:53.3587, Decl.2000=+47:38:32.262) is a rather little studied object despite its brightness (V=6.8). Its light variability was discovered by Bozic and Harmanec (1998) (A&A, 330, 222). They expressed a suspicion that HD 6226 could be an unrecognized Be star with alternating absorption and emission epochs. The H emission was indeed discovered by McCollum et al. (2000) (Paper #129.10 of the 197th meeting of AAS). Alternating B-Be-B phases and corresponding long-term light variations were documented and studied by Bozic et al. (2004) (A&A, 416, 669). They also discovered periodic radial-velocity variations of the deepest parts of line profiles with a 2.625-day period. This periodicity was confirmed and another Be episode was reported by Slechta and Skoda (2005) (Ap&SS, 294, 179). It seems that the onset of new Be episodes is very rapid (on a time scale of a few days) and quite spectacular. A new B-Be transition was detected between Oct 28 and 29, 2005 with a coudé spectrograph attached to the Ondrejov 2-m telescope. The increase of the emission strength was confirmed in Oct 30, 2005 with the same instrument - see Fig. 1. Figure 1.   The H line profiles of HD 6226 obtained on three consecutive nights in October 2005. A very dramatic development of the emission is seen. We alert all interested observers to obtain more spectral and photometric observations of this interesting object. Acknowledgement This study was supported from the research plans J13/98: 113200004 and K2043105 and from the grant GA CR 205/2003/0788.