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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 September 2016
The first indication that Be stars have an excess near-IR radiation, compared to normal stars of the same spectral type was found by Johnson et al. (1966). Johnson (1967) noticed that in his sample of 85 early type stars all the Be stars and shell stars had an excess in K-L and he concluded that this is due to IR emission from circumstellar shells. Woolf et al. (1970) suggested that the IR excess of Be stars might be due to free-free emission in the ionized circumstellar envelope which also produces the Balmer emission lines, but their observations at 5 and 10 µ could not rule out the possibility that circumstellar dust contributed to the excess. The observations by Allen (1973) of a large number of Be stars up to a wavelength of 3.5 µ could not make the distiction between free-free or dust emission either.