We present the IACOB spectroscopic database, the largest homogeneous database of high-resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio spectra of Northern Galactic OB-type stars compiled up to date. The spectra were obtained with the FIES spectrograph attached to the Nordic Optical Telescope. We briefly summarize the main characeristics and present status of the IACOB, first scientific results, and some future plans for its extension and scientific exploitation.

In this review I will present recent results obtained between 2005, which was the last “Be-stars” meeting in Sapporo, and 2010, on the observations of circumstellar disks around active hot stars.

Circumstellar discs of Be stars are thought to be formed from material ejected from a fast-spinning central star. This material possesses large amounts of angular momentum and settles in a quasi-Keplerian orbit around the star. This simple description outlines the basic issues that a successful disc theory must address: 1) What is the mechanism responsible for the mass ejection? 2) What is the final configuration of the material? 3) How the disc grows? With the very high angular resolution that can be achieved with modern interferometers operating in the optical and infrared we can now resolve the photosphere and immediate vicinity of nearby Be stars. Those observations are able to provide very stringent tests for our ideas about the physical processes operating in those objects. This paper discusses the basic hydrodynamics of viscous decretion discs around Be stars. The model predictions are quantitatively compared to observations, demonstrating that the viscous decretion scenario is currently the most viable theory to explain the discs around Be stars.

Long-baseline optical and IR interferometers now routinely resolve the wind and disk-like structures around early-type stars. The typical angular scales resolved by current generation of instruments are well bellow the milli-arcsecond level. These type of observations allow, in some cases for the first time, placing very tight constraints on current theories and models of the circumstellar structures around these type of stars. Specific examples of observations obtained at the Navy Prototype Optical interferometer of the spatially resolved regions around a luminous blue variable star P Cyg and a B-type star with circumstellar disk are presented. The need for connection between interferometric observables and physical parameters predicted by theory and numerical models are emphasized.

There are currently two optical interferometry recombiners that can provide spectral resolutions better than 10000, AMBER/VLTI operating in the H-K bands, and VEGA/CHARA, recently commissioned, operating in the visible. These instruments are well suited to study the wind activity of the brightest AB supergiants in our vicinity, in lines such as Hα or Brγ. We present here the first observations of this kind, performed on Rigel (B8Ia) and Deneb (A2Ia). Rigel was monitored by AMBER in two campaigns, in 2006-2007 and 2009-2010, and observed in 2009 by VEGA; whereas Deneb was monitored in 2008-2009 by VEGA. The extension of the Hα and Brγ line forming regions were accurately measured and compared with CMFGEN models of both stars. Moreover, clear signs of activity were observed in the differential visibility and phases. These pioneer observations are still limited, but show the path for a better understanding of the spatial structure and temporal evolution of localized ejections using optical interferometry.

X-rays give direct evidence of instabilities, time-variable structure, and shock heating in the winds of O stars. The observed broad X-ray emission lines provide information about the kinematics of shock-heated wind plasma, enabling us to test wind-shock models. And their shapes provide information about wind absorption, and thus about the wind mass-loss rates. Mass-loss rates determined from X-ray line profiles are not sensitive to density-squared clumping effects, and indicate mass-loss rate reductions of factors of 3 to 6 over traditional diagnostics that suffer from density-squared effects. Broad-band X-ray spectral energy distributions also provide mass-loss rate information via soft X-ray absorption signatures. In some cases, the degree of wind absorption is so high, that the hardening of the X-ray SED can be quite significant. We discuss these results as applied to the early O stars ζ Pup (O4 If), 9 Sgr (O4 V((f))), and HD 93129A (O2 If*).

The Herbig Ae/Be stars are the high-mass counterparts of the T Tauri stars, and are therefore considered as the pre-main sequence progenitors of the A/B stars. These stars are still contracting towards the main sequence, and are surrounded by dust and gas, remnants of their parental molecular cloud. In order to understand the formation processes at high mass, as well as the magnetic and rotation properties of the MS A/B stars, it is fundamental to understand the structure of the circumstellar matter of the Herbig Ae/Be stars, as well as the interaction of these PMS stars with their close environment. In this talk I will review our current knowledge about the properties of the circumstellar environment of the Herbig Ae/Be stars as well as the possible physical processes at the origin of their observed activities.

Classical Be stars, in addition to their emission-line spectra, are associated with infrared excess which is attributable to free-free emission from ionized gas. However, a few with exceptionally large near-infrared excess, namely with J–H, and H–Ks both greater than 0.6 mag—and excess emission extending to mid- and far-infrared wavelengths—must be accounted for by thermal emission from circumstellar dust. Evolved Be stars on the verge of turning off the main sequence may condense dust in their expanding cooling envelopes. The dust particles should be very small in size, hence reprocess starlight efficiently. This is in contrast to Herbig Ae/Be stars for which the copious infrared excess arises from relatively large grains as part of the surplus star-forming materials.

During the LBV phase—a short transitional phase of only the very massive stars—strong stellar winds sometimes accompanied by eruptions form small circumstellar LBV nebulae around a substantial number of LBV stars. Analyzing the morphology and and kinematics of the LBV nebulae even weakly bipolar components can be detected, leading to the conclusion that about 50% have—to some degree—a bipolar structure. A global overview of our current observational knowledge of LBV nebulae is summarized, including their morphology, sizes and kinematic parameters.

This session dealt with the circumstellar gas surrounding active OB stars, and the discussion broadly focused on disks, wind morphology and structures, X-ray emission, and mass loss rates.

We present the preliminary result of our spectroscopic observations covering a period over more than ten years, from 1999 up to 2010. We analyze line profile variations of several lines before the shell phase and during the shell phase. The measured radial velocity, equivalent width and line intensity variations are presented.

The physical interpretation of spectro-interferometric data is strongly model dependent. On one hand, models involving elaborate radiative transfer solvers are in general too time consuming to perform an automatic fitting procedure and derive astrophysical quantities and their related errors. On the other hand, using simple geometrical models does not give sufficient insights into the physics of the object. We developed a numerical tool optimised for mid-infrared (mid-IR) interferometry, the Fast Ray-tracing Algorithm for Circumstellar Structures (FRACS). Thanks to the short computing time required by FRACS, best-fit parameters and uncertainties for several physical quantities were obtained, such as inner dust radius, relative flux contribution of the central source and of the dusty CSE, dust temperature profile, disc inclination.

FS CMa type stars are a recently described group of objects with the B[e] phenomenon that exhibit strong emission-line spectra and strong IR excesses. In this paper we report the first attempt for a detailed modeling of IRAS 00470+6429, for which we have the best set of observations. Our modeling is based on two key assumptions: the star has a main-sequence luminosity for its spectral type (B2) and that the circumstellar (CS) envelope is bimodal, composed of a slowly outflowing disk-like wind and a fast polar wind. Both outflows are assumed to be purely radial. We adopt a novel approach to describe the dust formation site in the wind that employs timescale arguments for grain condensation and a self-consistent solution for the dust destruction surface. With the above assumptions we were able to reproduce satisfactorily many observational properties of IRAS 00470+6429, including the HI line profiles and the overall shape of the spectral energy distribution.

For a given photospheric model, we study the behavior of the BD as different density and temperature distributions in the circumstellar envelope are assumed. For non spherically symmetric envelopes, we analyze the variation of the BD when the angle of observation varies. The radiation transfer through the medium is handled by means of the Monte Carlo method. We calculate the flux emitted by the star+envelope system in a small wavelength range around the BD. The calculations are made under LTE conditions.

In Wisniewski et al. (2010), paper I, we analyzed 15 years of spectroscopic and spectropolarimetric data from the Ritter and Pine Bluff Observatories of 2 Be stars, 60 Cygni and π Aquarii, when a transition from Be to B star occurred. Here we analyze the intrinsic polarization, where we observe loop-like structures caused by the rise and fall of the polarization Balmer Jump and continuum V-band polarization being mismatched temporaly with polarimetric outbursts. We also see polarization angle deviations from the mean, reported in paper I, which may be indicative of warps in the disk, blobs injected at an inclined orbit, or spiral density waves. We show our ongoing efforts to model time dependent behavior of the disk to constrain the phenomena, using 3D Monte Carlo radiative transfer codes.

Long baseline interferometry now offers us the opportunity to measure the dimensions of Be star circumstellar disks across the spectrum. This includes the near-infrared continuum where the emission is dominated by bound-free and free-free emission from the ionized disk gas. Here we present the results of calculations of the disk sizes and continuum flux excesses for a simple version of the viscous decretion model of the disk. We compare these results to recent 18 μm flux measurements from the AKARI infrared satellite all-sky survey.

We describe the behaviour of IR hydrogen emission lines of a sample of Be stars and discuss the physical properties of the circumstellar envelopes of Be stars classified in Groups I and II (Mennickent et al. 2009). We find that while Humphreys and Pfund lines of Group I stars form in an optically thick envelope/disk, Group II stars show Pfund lines that form in an optically thick medium and Humphreys lines originating in optically thinner regions. The transition between Groups I and II could be understood in terms of the evolution of the circumstellar disk of the star and might bring clues on the mechanism originating the Be phenomenon.

In order to understand the mechanisms that govern the development of circumstellar disks surrounding classical Be stars, we use computational codes to create theoretical models of these particular objects with their gaseous environments and we compare the predicted observables to astronomical observations. In this study, we present the use of the non-LTE radiative transfer code of Sigut & Jones (2007) to examine the effect of a self-consistent thermal structure and realistic chemical composition on the polarization of the classical Be star γ Cassiopeia. Primarily, we investigate the effect of several improvements on the pioneering work of Poeckert & Marlborough (1978) in calculating the polarization levels of γ Cas. We establish best-fit models for the same observations and analyze the implications of the differences between our results and those obtained by Poeckert & Marlborough.

We present a novel theoretical tool to analyze the dynamical behaviour of a Be disk fed by non-constant decretion rates. It is mainly based on the computer code HDUST, a fully three-dimensional radiative transfer code that has been successfully applied to study several Be systems so far, and the SINGLEBE code that solves the 1D viscous diffusion problem. We have computed models of the temporal evolution of different types of Be star disks for different dynamical scenarios. By showing the behaviour of a large number of observables (interferometry, polarization, photometry and spectral line profiles), we show how it is possible to infer from observations some key dynamical parameters of the disk.

Hα high resolution spectroscopy combined with detailed numerical models is used to probe the physical conditions, such as density, temperature, and velocity of Be star disks. Models have been constructed for Be stars over a range in spectral types and inclination angles. We find that a variety of line shapes can be obtained by keeping the inclination fixed and changing density alone. This is due to the fact that our models account for disk temperature distributions self-consistently from the requirement of radiative equilibrium. A new analytical tool, called the variability ratio, was developed to identify emission-line stars at particular stages of variability. It is used in this work to quantify changes in the Hα equivalent widths for our observed spectra.