6 Conclusions

The new spectroscopic observations of a reddened A0-type hypergiant, AS314, resulted in constraining its intrinsic parameters and evidence that it is a candidate LBV in quiescence. Its wind seems to have the lowest terminal velocity among similar objects, while the mass loss rate is among the highest for the galactic high-luminosity stars. The far-IR excess is found to be due to the emission of circumstellar dust, which was probably formed in an event occurred after the star left the main-sequence but not during the red supergiant evolutionary phase. A general conclusion, which can be drawn from the observed radial velocity variations, is that the photospheric lines display a different behaviour from that of the wind lines, and the variations are real. We are not able to interpret them because of the small number of the spectra obtained. To make further progress in understanding its properties the following observations are desirable:

1.

A more thorough study of the radial velocity variations through high-resolution spectroscopy;

2.

Infrared observations to constrain properties of the circumstellar dust;

3.

Photometric monitoring is worthwhile as the star may show significant brightness variations.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank T.M. Pogrosheva and K.S. Kuratov for their help in photometric observations in Kazakhstan and V.E. Panchuk for his help in spectroscopic observations at the 6m telescope. We appreciate the efforts of T. Lloyd Evans in obtaining the infrared photometry at SAAO. A.M. acknowledges financial support of the ESO C&EE Programme grant A-07-022. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France.