A Non-LTE Analysis of the Hot Subdwarf O Star BD+28°4211. I. The UV Spectrum

Abstract

We present a detailed analysis of the UV spectrum of the calibration star BD+28°4211 using high-quality spectra obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope and Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer satellites. To this aim, we compare quantitatively the observed data with model spectra obtained from state-of-the-art non-LTE metal line-blanketed model atmospheres and synthetic spectra calculated with TLUSTY and SYNSPEC. We thus determine in a self-consistent way the abundances of 11 elements with well-defined lines in the UV, namely those of C, N, O, F, Mg, Si, P, S, Ar, Fe, and Ni. The derived abundances range from about solar to 1/10 solar. We find that the overall quality of the derived spectral fits is very satisfying. Our spectral analysis can be used to constrain rather tightly the effective temperature of BD+28°4211 to a value of T _eff = 82, 000 ± 5000 K. We also estimate conservatively that its surface gravity falls in the range log g = 6.2_{-0.1}^{+0.3}. Assuming that the Hipparcos measurement for BD+28°4211 is fully reliable and that our model atmospheres are reasonably realistic, we can reconcile our spectroscopic constraints with the available parallax measurement only if the mass of BD+28°4211 is significantly less than the canonical value of 0.5 M _⊙ for a representative post-extended horizontal branch star.