COMMISSION 27 OF THE I. A. U.
         INFORMATION BULLETIN ON VARIABLE STARS
                     Number 1886

                                  Konkoly Observatory
                                  Budapest
                                  1980 December 15

                                  HU ISSN 0374-0676



         14 Lac: A NEW LIGHT VARIABLE Be STAR




    14 Lac is a B3 IV star which has been suspected as a variable 
with an amplitude of few hundredths of a magnitude by Walker
(1952).
    This object was adopted as one of the comparison stars in
a rather long series of U, B, V observations of the shell star
o And, taken in 1969 at the Astrophysical Station of Serra La
Nave of the Catania Observatory. The said observations, which
are distributed over 32 nights from August to November, with
several hours of measurements in each night, were kindly supplied 
to me by Prof.M.Rodono. A preliminary analysis of these
observations shows that 14 Lac is variable with an amplitude of
about 0.05 mag. in the three colours and with a possible periodicity 
(or pseudo-periodicity) of about 5 days.
    In order to clarify the type of variability and since from
narrow band photoelectric measurements 14 Lac was suspected by
Andrews (1968) to be a star with H_alpha emission, a few grating
spectra were collected on October and November 1980 with the
Cassegrain spectrograph attached to the 137 cm reflector of the
Merate Observatory. In particular, two 35 Ang./mm red spectra show
that the H_alpha line consists of a strong absorption core flanked
by emission components, so that 14 Lac is a Be star. This conclusion 
is strengthened by the amplitude and timescale of light
variations and by the relatively high projected rotational velocity 
of this object (225 km/sec, Abt and Hunter, 1962).

     Full details relating to the light variability and the
spectral characteristics of 14 Lac will be given elsewhere.








                          LUCIANO MANTEGAZZA
                        Osservatorio Astronomico
                        Via Bianchi, 46
                        22055 Merate, Italy





References:
Walker, M.F., 1952, Astrophys.J., 116, 106 [BIBCODE 1952ApJ...116..106W ]
Andrews, P.J., 1968, Mem.R.astron.Soc., 72, 35 [BIBCODE 1968MmRAS..72...35A ]
Abt, H.A., Hunter, J.H., 1962, Astrophys.J., 136, 381 [BIBCODE 1962ApJ...136..381A ]