IRAS Colors of Normal Stars
Abstract
Using stars from the Bright Star Catalog, supplemented by cool dwarf stars from the Gliese catalog, that were detected by IRAS, the authors define empirically the median intrinsic visual-to-infrared color indices for "normal" stars as a function of IRAS wavelength (at 12, 25, 60, and 100 μm), spectral type (between O5 and M8), and luminosity class (all classes between I and V). These indices are presented graphically and in tabular form. Anomalously red stars are dicussed. Two otherwise undistinguished F giant stars are found with significant excesses at 12 μm. Be stars differ markedly from non-emission B stars in their V-[12] indices due to contamination of the former by free-free emission. Both B and Be stars show large dispersions in V-[25] colors that the authors associate with the heating of local, but strictly interstellar, dust clouds by some of the non-emission B stars. The derived sequences of stellar colors are closely approximated by either simple blackbody predictions or by model-atmosphere calculations.
- Publication:
-
The Astronomical Journal
- Pub Date:
- May 1987
- DOI:
- 10.1086/114401
- Bibcode:
- 1987AJ.....93.1199C
- Keywords:
-
- B Stars;
- Infrared Astronomy Satellite;
- Infrared Spectra;
- Stellar Color;
- Stellar Spectra;
- Cool Stars;
- Dwarf Stars;
- F Stars;
- O Stars;
- Stellar Luminosity;
- Astronomy;
- STARS: ATMOSPHERES;
- INFRARED: SOURCES