First Evidence of Circumstellar Disks around Blue Straggler Stars

Details First Evidence of Circumstellar Disks around Blue Straggler Stars First Evidence of Circumstellar Disks around Blue Straggler Stars

2004-04-02

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0404065v1

Astrophys.J. 606 (2004) L151-154

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Accepted by ApJ Letters 10 pages, 2 figures

Scientific paper

10.1086/421460

We present an analysis of optical HST/STIS and HST/FOS spectroscopy of 6 blue stragglers found in the globular clusters M3, NGC6752 and NGC6397. These stars are a subsample of a set of ~50 blue stragglers and stars above the main sequence turn-off in four globular clusters which will be presented in an forthcoming paper. All but the 6 stars presented here can be well fitted with non-LTE model atmospheres. The 6 misfits, on the other hand, possess Balmer jumps which are too large for the effective temperatures implied by their Paschen continua. We find that our data for these stars are consistent with models only if we account for extra absorption of stellar Balmer photons by an ionized circumstellar disk. Column densities of HI and CaII are derived as are the the disks' thicknesses. This is the first time that a circumstellar disk is detected around blue stragglers. The presence of magnetically-locked disks attached to the stars has been suggested as a mechanism to lose the large angular momentum imparted by the collision event at the birth of these stars. The disks implied by our study might not be massive enough to constitute such an angular momentum sink, but they could be the leftovers of once larger disks.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

First Evidence of Circumstellar Disks around Blue Straggler Stars does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with First Evidence of Circumstellar Disks around Blue Straggler Stars, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and First Evidence of Circumstellar Disks around Blue Straggler Stars will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-287082