In this brief communication we provide the rationale for, and the outcome of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) resolution vote at the XXIX th General Assembly in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 2015, on recommended nominal conversion constants for selected solar and planetary properties. The problem addressed by the resolution is a lack of established conversion constants between solar and planetary values and SI units: a missing standard has caused a proliferation of solar values (e.g., solar radius, solar irradiance, solar luminosity, solar effective temperature and solar mass parameter) in the literature, with cited solar values typically based on best estimates at the time of paper writing. As precision of observations increases, a set of consistent values becomes increasingly important. To address this, an IAU Working Group on Nominal Units for Stellar and Planetary Astronomy formed in 2011, uniting experts from the solar, stellar, planetary, exoplanetary and fundamental astronomy, as well as from general standards fields to converge on optimal values for nominal conversion constants. The effort resulted in the IAU 2015 Resolution B3, passed at the IAU General Assembly by a large majority. The resolution recommends the use of nominal solar and planetary values, which are by definition exact and are expressed in SI units. These nominal values should be understood as conversion factors only, not as the true solar/planetary properties or current best estimates. Authors and journal editors are urged to join in using the standard values set forth by this resolution in future work and publications to help minimize further confusion.

A brief history of investigations of Lyr, an emission‐line binary and one of the first ever discovered Be stars is presented. A rather fast progress in the understanding of this enigmatic object during the past fifteen years is then discussed in some detail. The current picture of β Lyr is that it is an eclipsing binary in a stage of mass transfer between the components. The mass‐losing star is a B6‐8II object, with a mass of about 3 M⊙, which is filling the Roche lobe and sending material towards its more massive companion at a rate of about 2 × 10—5 M⊙ yr—1. This leads to the observed rapid increase of the orbital period at a rate of 19 s per year. The mass‐gaining star is as early B star with a mass of about 13 M⊙. It is completely hidden inside an opaque accretion disk, jet‐like structures, perpendicular to the orbital plane and a light‐scattering halo above the poles of the star. The observed radiation of the disk corresponds to an effective temperature which is much lower than what would correspond to an early B star. The disk shields the radiation of the central star in the directions along the orbital plane and redistributes it in the directions perpendicular to it. That is why the mass‐losing star appears brighter of the two in the optical region of the spectrum. At present, rather reliable estimates of all basic properties of the binary and its components are available. However, in spite of great progress in understanding the system in recent years, some disagreement between the existing models and observed phase variations still remains, both for continuum and line spectrum, which deserves further effort.

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Accurate photometric CoRoT space observations of a secondary seismological target, HD 174884, led to the discovery that this star is an astrophysically important double-lined eclipsing spectroscopic binary in an eccentric orbit (e ∼ 0.3), unusual for its short 3. d 65705 orbital period. The high eccentricity, coupled with the orientation of the binary orbit in space, explains the very unusual observed light curve with strongly unequal primary and secondary eclipses having the depth ratio of 1-to-100 in the CoRoT "seismo" passband. Without the high accuracy of the CoRoT photometry, the secondary eclipse, 1.5 mmag deep, would have gone unnoticed. A spectroscopic follow-up program provided 45 high dispersion spectra. The analysis of the CoRoT light curve was performed with an adapted version of PHOEBE that supports CoRoT passbands. The final solution was obtained by a simultaneous fitting of the light and the radial velocity curves. Individual star spectra were obtained by spectrum disentangling. The uncertainties of the fit were achieved by bootstrap resampling and the solution uniqueness was tested by heuristic scanning. The results provide a consistent picture of the system composed of two late B stars. The Fourier analysis of the light curve fit residuals yields two components, with orbital frequency multiples and an amplitude of ∼0.1 mmag, which are tentatively interpreted as tidally induced pulsations. An extensive comparison with theoretical models is carried out by means of the Levenberg-Marquardt minimization technique, and the discrepancy between the models and the derived parameters is discussed. The best fitting models yield a young system age of 125 million years which is consistent with the eccentric orbit and synchronous component rotation at periastron.

A detailed analysis of more than 800 electronic high-resolution spectra of gamma Cas, which were obtained during a time interval of over 6000 days (16.84 yr) at several observatories, documents the smooth variations in the density and/or extent of its circumstellar envelope. We found a clear anticorrelation between the peak intensity and FWHM of the Hα emission, which seems to agree with recent models of such emission lines. The main result of this study is a confirmation of the binary nature of the object, determination of a reliable linear ephemeris T min.RV = HJD (2 452 081.9±0.6)+(203. d 52±0. d 08)× E, and a rather definitive set of orbital elements. We clearly demonstrated that the orbit is circular within the limits of accuracy of our measurements and has a semi-amplitude of radialvelocity curve of 4.30 ± 0.09 km s −1 . No trace of the low-mass secondary was found. The time distribution of our spectra does not allow a reliable investigation of rapid spectral variations, which are undoubtedly present in the spectra. We postpone this investigation for a future study, based on series of dedicated whole-night spectral observations.

The determination of accurate and reliable basic physical properties of Be stars is a very complicated task which, among other things, requires a good knowledge of the variability pattern of each particular object. Possible confusion between a rotationally distorted photosphere and a pseudophotosphere – an inner optically thick part of a gradually formed envelope which temporarily mimics a photosphere – is discussed in some detail in relation to the stellar effective temperature, brightness and rate of rotation. It is shown that the currently available data allow us to set relatively stringent limits on possible radii of at least some brighter Be stars, but very few direct determinations of mass have been made. The only exceptions are the Be stars in eclipsing binaries. The trouble is, however, that all of them are interacting binaries for which reliable orbital solutions are seriously hampered by the presence of gas streams and by strong interactions between the binary components. Moreover, their masses need not be representative for the whole population of Be stars.An answer to the question about the evolutionary stage of Be stars is even more uncertain since it is closely related to the principal, as yet unanswered question about the origin of the Be phenomenon itself.

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