X-shooter is the first 2nd generation instrument of the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). It is a very efficient, single-target, intermediate-resolution spectrograph that was installed at the Cassegrain focus of UT2 in 2009. The instrument covers, in a single exposure, the spectral range from 300 to 2500 nm. It is designed to maximize the sensitivity in this spectral range through dichroic splitting in three arms with optimized optics, coatings, dispersive elements and detectors. It operates at intermediate spectral resolution (R ∼ 4000−17 000, depending on wavelength and slit width) with fixed échelle spectral format (prism cross-dispersers) in the three arms. It includes a 1.8 × 4 integral field unit as an alternative to the 11 long slits. A dedicated data reduction package delivers fully calibrated two-dimensional and extracted spectra over the full wavelength range. We describe the main characteristics of the instrument and present its performance as measured during commissioning, science verification and the first months of science operations.
Context. Be stars undergo outbursts producing a circumstellar disk from the ejected material. The beating of non-radial pulsations has been put forward as a possible mechanism of ejection. Aims. We analyze the pulsational behavior of the early B0.5IVe star HD 49330 observed during the first CoRoT long run towards the Galactical anticenter (LRA1). This Be star is located close to the lower edge of the β Cephei instability strip in the HR diagram and showed a 0.03 mag outburst during the CoRoT observations. It is thus an ideal case for testing the aforementioned hypothesis. Methods. We analyze the CoRoT light curve of HD 49330 using Fourier methods and non-linear least square fitting. Results. In this star, we find pulsation modes typical of β Cep stars (p modes) and SPB stars (g modes) with amplitude variations along the run directly correlated with the outburst. These results provide new clues about the origin of the Be phenomenon as well as strong constraints on the seismic modelling of Be stars.
Context. Effective temperatures of early-type supergiants are important to test stellar atmosphere-and internal structure-models of massive and intermediate mass objects at different evolutionary phases. However, these T eff values are more or less discrepant depending on the method used to determine them. Aims. We aim to obtain a new calibration of the T eff parameter for early-type supergiants as a function of observational quantities that are: a) highly sensitive to the ionization balance in the photosphere and its gas pressure; b) independent of the interstellar extinction; c) as much as possible model-independent. Methods. The observational quantities that best address our aims are the (λ 1 , D) parameters of the BCD spectrophotometric system. They describe the energy distribution around the Balmer discontinuity, which is highly sensitive to T eff and log g. We perform a calibration of the (λ 1 , D) parameters into T eff using effective temperatures derived with the bolometric-flux method for 217 program stars, whose individual uncertainties are on average |ΔT eff |/T f eff = 0.05. Results. We obtain a new and homogeneous calibration of the BCD (λ 1 , D) parameters for OB supergiants and revisit the current calibration of the (λ 1 , D) zone occupied by dwarfs and giants. The final comparison of calculated with obtained T eff values in the (λ 1 , D) calibration show that the latter have total uncertainties, which on average are T eff /T f eff ±0.05 for all spectral types and luminosity classes. Conclusions. The effective temperatures of OB supergiants derived in this work agree on average within some 2000 K with other determinations found in the literature, except those issued from wind-free non-LTE plane-parallel models of stellar atmospheres, which produce effective temperatures that can be overestimated by up to more than 5000 K near T eff = 25 000 K. Since the stellar spectra needed to obtain the (λ 1 , D) parameters are of low resolution, a calibration based on the BCD system is useful to study stars and stellar systems like open clusters, associations or stars in galaxies observed with multi-object spectrographs and/or spectro-imaging devices.
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