Optical excess emission in T Tauri stars

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Abstract

This paper presents simultaneous high-resolution spectra and spectrophotometric observations of a sample of 22 weak-lined and classical T Tauri stars in the Taurus-Auriga dark cloud. The reddening, stellar luminosities, variability, optical excess luminosities, and IR excess luminosities of these stars are estimated. It is found that previous studies have systematically underestimated the extinction toward T Tauri stars by as much as 50 percent because they ignored the color changes introduced by the optical excess emission. New values for the stellar luminosities of the program objects do not differ significantly from those obtained from near-IR studies. Simple models indicate that the optical excesses arise from regions with densities about 10 exp 14/cu cm, temperature of about 9000 K, optical depths between about 0.2 and 5, and covering factors of about 5 percent of the stellar surface area. The mass accretion rates inferred from the excess are typically about 10 exp -7 solar mass/yr.

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