2 Sample selection

 

The target stars have been selected from the catalogue of Herbig AeBe stars of Thé et al. (1994) to cover the widest possible range of spectral types and to be easily observable from the northern hemisphere. As shown in Fig. 1, the observed sample covers rather uniformly the range of spectral types between A7 and O9, with only two stars (Z CMa, spectral type F5, and V645 Cyg, O7) outside of this interval.

 

Figure 1:  Distribution of the spectral types of 44 of the observed Herbig AeBe stars (Z CMa, Sp.Type F5, is outside the plot)

The 26 new target stars are listed in Table 1 (data on the other 19 sources can be found in Tables 1 and 2 of Paper I). For each star we report in Col. 1 the name, in Cols. 2 and 3 the coordinates at the 1950 equinox, in Col. 4 the spectral type, in Col. 5 the distance from the Sun, in Col. 6 the projected physical size of the observed field at the assumed distance, in Cols. 7, 8 and 9 the limiting magnitudes in the J, H and K bands, in Col. 10 the photometric accuracy and in Col. 11 the completeness absolute magnitude $M_{K}\rm ^c$ (see discussion below).

 

Table 1:  Observed Herbig AeBe stars

In Fig. 2 the galactic positions of the observed sources (including the 19 listed in Paper I) are presented. There appears to be no stronger selection effect, with the exception that Ae stars tend to be closer to the Sun than Be stars, as expected.

 

Figure 2:  Left: galactic latitude of the observed sources versus spectral type of the Herbig AeBe star. Right: position on the galactic plane of the observed stars; the position of the Sun is represented by a "+'' and the Galactic Center is at (0, -8.5), filled circles represent stars with spectral type earlier than B8, open circles stars later than B8. The two most distant stars (MWC 300 and V645 Cyg) are not included. The concentric circles are centered on the Sun position and have radii of 1 and 2 kpc