The Abundances of the Elements in Sharp-lined Early-Type Stars from IUE High-Dispersion Spectrograms. I. Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, and CO

Abstract

The current study was undertaken to test the viability of lUE archives as a source of information on elemental species unavailable from (ground-based) coudé spectra. The first step in this endeavor is to check the consistency of abundances obtained from lUE material and those derived from the ground especially as reported in a series of papers by Adelman and coworkers. In this paper we examine the Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, and Co abundances derived from co-added lUE high-dispersion LWP or LWR spectrograms of four HgMn stars and five normal main-sequence B and A stars. This material represents a significant improvement over that obtainable directly from the lUE archives. We also find good agreement with two independent model atmosphere and synthesis codes: Kurucz's SYNTHE and programs developed at the University of Michigan. For the iron group, we find good (approximately ≤0.2 dex) agreement between UV and optical determinations. We are optimistic that the lUE archives may be usefully exploited for abundance work, especially for elements unavailable in ground-based spectra.