Be stars in Gaia

Gaia typically lists G-band apparent magnitude (m), as well as BP and RP colours. Using these, one can verify the position of the Be star on the HR diagram.

Typically, the listed magnitudes need to be corrected for reddening. The amount of reddening can be approximated through an absorption coefficient Av (Ag for the Gaia band), that can be estimated from the fitted Nh obtained through X-ray spectral fitting (or the nh query on HEASARC). See here for example. The value obtained here is not equivalent to Ag, but is typically a bit off (see this Gaia DR2 paper).

Gaia G absolute magnitude is given by: M = m - 5*log(dist)+5;

Dereddenned: M_dered = m - 5*log(dist)+5-Ag;

Color excess: BP-RP = Bmag-Rmag;

Dereddenned: BP-RP_dered = Bmag - Rmag - Ag/2;

The factor 2 only applies to sources with parallax less than 1mas, and was taken from the Gaia DR2 paper above.