Cool Star Empirical Temperature Scales

Abstract

The empirical temperatures scale for cool stars is generally well established. Temperatures are now known with reasonable precision for stars covering the range of spectral types from A to M. In the historical paper by Code, Davis, Bless and Hanbury Brown (Code et al. 1976), six stars between 10000K and 6500К had radii measured by the intensity interferometer and these six, together with the sun formed the basis of the empirical temperature calibration at the time. Since then, many temperatures have been derived for A-K stars (Blackwell & Lynas-Gray 1994; Alonso et al. 1996a) using the Infra-Red Flux Method (see Megessier 1994,5 and this volume), while lunar occultations (Ridgway et al. 1980) and more recently Michelson interferometry (Di Benedetto & Rabbia 1987; Dyck et al. 1996), have been used to measure the radii of K and M giants. It is a tribute to Han-bury Brown’s Intensity Interferometer that temperature scales based on its measurements are essentially unchanged by the new data.