The Nature of the Extreme Emission Line Star MWC 297

Abstract

MWC 297 is one of the objects in Herbig’s (1960) original list of young stars, which were later called the Herbig Ae/Be stars. Since the object displays a prodigious infrared excess, forbidden lines in the spectrum, and an early spectral type (based on photometry), MWC 297 satisfies all the criteria of being a B[e] star, and it appears regularly in catalogues containing B[e] stars. Because of its large reddening, MWC 297 has so far evaded a spectroscopic spectral classification, and consequently, the distance and nature of the object remained to some extent unclear. In this contribution, we use high signal-to-noise (SNR > 150), medium resolution (0.8) blue spectra, with a total exposure time in excess of 8 hours, that we have obtained at the William Herschel Telescope in June 1994, and will show that MWC 297 is a rapidly rotating B1.5Ve star located in the Aquila Rift.