Spectral Analysis and Classification of Herbig Ae/Be Stars

We present an analysis of the optical spectra of 75 early-type emission-line stars, many of which have been classified previously as Herbig Ae/Be (HAeBe) stars. Accurate spectral types were derived for 58 members of the sample; high continuum veiling, contamination by nonphotospheric absorption features, or a composite binary spectrum prevented accurate spectral typing for the rest. Approximately half of our sample exhibited [O I] λ6300 forbidden-line emission down to our detection limit of 0.1 Å equivalent width; a third of the sample exhibited Fe II emission (multiplet 42). A subset of 11 of the HAeBe sample showed abnormally strong Fe II absorption; 75% of this subset are confirmed UX Ori objects. Combining our spectral typing results with photometry from the literature, we confirm previous findings of high values of total-to-selective extinction ( R V ∼ 5) in our larger sample, suggesting significant grain growth in the environments of HAeBe stars. With this high value of R V , the vast majority of HAeBe stars appear younger than with the standard R V = 3.1 extinction law and are more consistent with being pre–main-sequence objects.