Metallicities of the SPB stars from the IUE ultraviolet spectra ^*

Astronomical Institute of the Wrocław University, ul. Kopernika 11, 51-622 Wrocław, Poland

Corresponding author: eniem@astro.uni.wroc.pl

Received: 31 January 2003
Accepted: 8 April 2003

Abstract

We derived the stellar parameters (angular diameters, effective temperatures, metallicities) and interstellar reddenings for 20 SPB and 34 reference stars observed during the IUE satellite mission. The parameters were derived by means of an algorithmic procedure of fitting theoretical flux distributions to the low-resolution IUE spectra and optical spectrophotometric observations. Since the metallicity [m/H] has a special importance for pulsating B type stars, we focused our attention on that parameter. We found that the mean value of the metallicity of the considered SPB and reference stars amounts to [m/H] . The results only slightly depend on the reduction procedure used for the IUE images (NEWSIPS and INES). The metal abundances obtained in this paper are in accordance with the average value of -0.2 dex for stars in the solar neighborhood recently reported by other investigators.