Nonradial pulsations in the open cluster NGC 3766

Abstract

AbstractNonradial pulsations (NRPs) are a proposed mechanism for the formation of decretion disks around Be stars. They are important tools to study the internal structure of stars. NGC 3766 has an unusually large fraction of transient Be stars, so it is an excellent location to study the formation mechanism of Be-star disks. High-resolution spectroscopy can reveal line-profile variations from NRPs, allowing measurements of both the degree, l, and azimuthal order, m. However, spectroscopic studies require large amounts of time with large telescopes to achieve the necessary high signal-to-noise ratio and time-domain coverage. On the other hand, multicolor photometry can be performed more easily with small telescopes to measure l only. Here, we present representative light curves of Be stars and nonemitting B stars in NGC 3766 from the CTIO 0.9m telescope in an effort to study NRPs in this cluster.