Greetings from the Co-Chairs of the Working Group

Dear Active B Star Colleagues,

Following our selection as the Co-Chairs of the Working Group on Active B Stars for the next triennium, we would like to share with you some of our visions and priorities for our small but enthusiastic niche in the IAU organization. These include the adoption of a mission statement and set of formal bylaws and the planning for a possible meeting in about three years.

We would like to extend a hearty THANK YOU to our outgoing chair Stan Owocki. Under his helm the Working Group benefitted from the expertise of a keen theorist and researcher on activity in massive stars. Along with the help of Stan Stefl and Atsuo Okazaki, Stan succeeded in bringing about the successful meeting on "Active OB-Stars: Laboratories for Stellar & Circumstellar Physics" in Sapporo, Japan in 2005 September. We are looking forward to a continuing collaboration with Stan on our working group activities.

The Working Group (originally known as the Working Group on Be Stars) was re-established under IAU Commission No. 29 at the IAU General Assembly in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1979, and has been continuously active to the present. However, a formal mission statement and set of bylaws have never been adopted. This recurrently presents a problem, especially every three years when the Working Group must elect a new Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC). There have been no set of rules to determine how members are nominated and even who is eligible to vote. Our first priority is to work with the SOC to produce a draft of a mission statement and bylaws that we intend to present to the membership for comment and ultimately a final vote.

Another priority is to stimulate interest in the Working Group activities, including the submission of articles and short items to the Be Star Newsletter and interaction with other IAU Working Groups and Commissions such as those on Massive Stars, Ap Stars, and Close Binary Stars.

The field of the Be star research has been very active during the last few years, and we expect this activity to increase. The recent development of powerful observational equipment has led to significant progress in our knowledge of Be stars physics. The advent of the VLTI interferometer and the CHARA Array have allowed the spatial resolution of several Be star photospheres and disks, and many new studies are ongoing. The application of spectropolarimetric techniques resulted in the discovery of magnetic fields in a few Be stars, and the commissioning of new and more powerful spectropolarimeters will allow the systematic study of the prevalence of magnetic fields among Be stars and their relation with the mass ejection episodes.

Perhaps the most exciting current development is the accurate photometric monitoring of Be stars from outside our atmosphere. The Canadian space mission MOST, launched on 2003 June 30, has already provided photometric time series of unprecedented quality of the bright Be stars  Ophiuchi and  Canis Minoris, revealing a rich spectrum of frequencies associated with radial and nonradial pulsations in both objects. The French led COROT satellite was successfully launched last December 27th, and started its scientific observations on 2007 February 3. COROT will provide photometry of many Be stars in continuous runs lasting from 20 to 150 days. The analysis of the photometric time series and the interpretation of the results with the techniques of asteroseismology will provide important insights on the internal structure of Be stars, the role of nonradial pulsations, and its relation with the Be star outbursts.

Although opportunities to study Be stars in the FUV are currently limited, new spectra are being obtained of Be stars in our galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds with the FUSE spacecraft. This new data will provide information on the abundances of carbon, nitrogen, and the iron group elements in the photospheres of Be stars that will complement and serve as a check on the results and predictions from the planned asteroseismology investigations.

Other important tools that will be available for Be star researchers in the near future are the ongoing and planned deep photometric galactic plane surveys. In the northern hemisphere the H IPHAS survey and the near-infrared UKIDSS-GPS survey are near completion, and are already releasing their data products or will start this release soon. In the southern hemisphere, the H VPHAS+ and near-infrared VVV ESO public surveys will start observations as soon as their associated instrumentation are available. The scientific exploitation of the survey data will produce an increase of several orders of magnitude of the number of Be stars known in our Galaxy.

All these developments configure a scenario of an exciting and rapidly evolving field of research. In this context, it seems timely for a new major international meeting of researchers on active B stars in the 2009-2011 time frame. Although it is still in the initial discussion stage, actions in this direction have already been undertaken. We will communicate updates on this endeavor as they materialize.

If you have ideas on other action items that we should put on our agenda, we encourage your input. Please write to either of us at any time. We are looking forward to working with you to make the Working Group on Active B Stars one of the most productive ones in the IAU Community.

Best Wishes,
Gerrie Peters & Juan Fabregat
Co-Chairs of the Working Group on Active B Stars (2006-09)