UX ori

UX ori is an herbig type object, first of the UXors group. This pre main sequence star have spectrometric and phtotometric variation correlated and anticorrelated depending of the spectral domain..

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=ux+ori&submit=SIMBAD+search

Gary Walker, Maria Mitchell Observatory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Mitchell_Observatory), has recently sent a call for Ha spectroscopic observation on the Spectro_L mailing list.

He said about this star:  "Uxors are characterized by aperiodic dimmings of 1-4 magnitudes,  it is thought that circumstellar dust clouds may be the cause.  The class is not well defined, and the models do not account all of the data observed.  THey do increase polarization when faint.  This is what makes them interesting to us here at MMO, and we have observed them for 4 years.  "

An intense survey of the Ha profile is interesting and show some correlation with photometric behavior. Another quest began.

The target star is not an easy high resolution spectroscopic object. Low spectral contrast, noisy continnum (Veil effect ?) would require a larger professionnal telescopefor a good SNR intead of inch'amateur one. Let try. Data at least !

Here is a first spectra gathered by a good night with my LhiresIII 2400gr R15000 slit spectrograph attached to a CN212 Takahashi telescope. CCD is a modest Atik 314L+ very suitable for spectroscopy works. What we see is activity inside Ha core, certainly due to a gas surrounding the star and a lot of cosmic ray (Straight strong lines)...

_ux_ori_20110112_776  

Edit: new spectra from Jan, 14th  very different from the 12th one

Not sure that the first spectra is from UX ori. This one is more conform to what we found in the literacy, a Ha double peak and i was able to make a comparison of the field with the POSS. The night was better. Very noisy too. Not sure it is useful to continue.

_ux_ori_20110114_770

New spectra from Jan, 21. Still noisy, V/R ratio seems to have change.

_ux_ori_20110121_857_norm

Want an idea of the 2D spectrum ?

  easy target isn't it ?

Compare to CI cyg, same Vmag, less exposure time, and at very low horizon altitude but much more easy !