New Findings Supporting the Presence of Several Distinct Structures of Circumstellar Matter in β Lyræ

Abstract

(1) 52 photographic and 651 electronic spectra were disentangled using the program KOREL. This led to the detection of a number of weak absorption lines originating in the atmosphere of the accretion disk. So far, the detection of this disk spectrum was only reported for the Si 6347 and 6371 Å doublet. (2) The basic spectrophotometric quantities of 15 absorption lines of the primary were measured and corrected for the orbital light changes in order to eliminate the contribution of the secondary light to the observed continuum level. After the correction, a significant phase dependency of the spectral-line characteristics near the primary eclipse was detected. In all probability, another so far unknown absorption-line spectrum was thus found. This spectrum may be due to additional absorption of light of the primary in one of the jet-like structures and in the spherical gas envelope surrounding the accretion disk. Both these structures are seen projected against the primary during its eclipse.