1 Introduction

MWC 297 is a little known B[e] star. It was discovered, because of its H$_\alpha$emission as Be star by Merrill et al. (1932), but carries no special note. Herbig (1960) adds that H$_\beta$ and H$_{\gamma}$ were strongly in emission in 1931, but that on his plates H$_{\gamma}$ was weak and H$_\beta$ very weak, if in emission at all. He found Ca II to be in very strong absorption and saw no other absorptions. He found in red light a moderately bright nebulosity extends up to about 5$^\prime$ from the star ƒand states that it is a heavily reddened reflection nebula.

A large infrared excess was found by Allen & Swings (1972) ($V - K\gt 8^{\rm m}$).

Sanduleak & Stephenson (1973) call attention to the strong emission in H$_\beta$, calling the star a Be! object and Loren et al. (1973) discovered CO emission, confirmed later on by Canto et al. (1984).

Bergner et al. (1988) made a photometric study of the object in the Johnson UBVRIJHK system and found,

a)

variations of up to 0$\hbox{$.\!\!^{\rm m}$}$48 in V, of up to 3$\hbox{$.\!\!^{\rm m}$}$26 in U and of less than 1$\hbox{$.\!\!^{\rm m}$}$00 in I, J, H, K,

b)

an anticorrelation between U and K variations, implying a dust component in the variations,

c)

the color curve ($U, B,...\,K$) can be decomposed into that of a heavily extinguished B0 type star plus a body with T=1300 K.

The distance of the object is given as about 450 pc by Hennings et al. (1994), which for a normal dwarf B0 would imply an extinction of about zero, wheras the observed color B-V (=2.37) conduces to an extinction of 8m.

Of later authors, Thé et al. (1994) classify it as Herbig Ae/Be candidate and de Winter & Pérez (1998) as B[e] candidate with [O I] in emission.