Exploring Photometric Methods for Identifying Emission-Line B-Type Stars

Emission-line B-type stars, or Be stars, are a mysterious class of stars defined by their unique behavior: These stars eject material from their surfaces, forming a disc of gas that surrounds them. Furthermore, the gaseous disc is not necessarily a permanent feature of its host star. Some Be stars’ discs vary in structure over time, and may even disappear only to be regenerated later. Other Be stars may never show appreciable changes in the natures of their discs once they have been formed. The disc’s existence causes the appearance of characteristic emission lines in Be stars’ spectra, making spectroscopy the traditional method for identifying Be stars. However, spectroscopy is an inefficient and time-consuming method of finding Be stars, because it allows for only a single star to be observed in each exposure, and each star may require multiple exposures for durations of many minutes. Photometry, on the other hand, can be used to observe many stars simultaneously, but at the cost of the greater detail afforded by spectroscopy. While photometry has been used to identify Be stars, its success has been limited. In this work, we present a novel photometric technique that enables efficient identification of Be stars.