2008PASP..120..715A

Furenlid & Young showed that in main-sequence B0-B3 stars the Hα line profiles are distorted, showing shortward absorption evidently due to mass loss. Earlier, others have found evidence of mass loss in UV ionic lines in such stars. Are the radial velocities of B0-B3 stars in the optical region distorted by such effects? We looked at all the 10 young open clusters (log age) with sufficient numbers of measured radial velocities, many of them measured with CORAVEL, and found that in each case that the main-sequence B0-B3 stars have larger velocities than earlier or later stars. However, that difference is in the wrong sense to be explained by mass loss effects. Could the distorted radial velocities be due to the Barr Effect in binaries? This study does not prove that the radial velocities of B0-B3 stars are misleading because of an uncertainty about what the cross-correlation measures represent. However, some previously published studies plus this one provide a warning that the radial velocities may be uncertain.