The Structure and Emission of the Accretion Shock in T Tauri Stars. II. The Ultraviolet‐Continuum Emission

We compare accretion shock models with optical and ultraviolet spectra ofpre-main sequence stars to (1) make the first determinations of accretion ratesin intermediate mass T Tauri stars from continuum emission, and (2) deriveimproved estimates of accretion rates and extinctions for continuum T Tauristars. Our method extends the shock models developed by Calvet and Gullbring toenable comparisons with optical and archival International Ultraviolet Explorerultraviolet spectra. We find good agreement between the observations and themodel predictions, supporting the basic model of magnetospheric accretionshocks as well as previous determinations of accretion rates and interstellarreddening for the low mass T Tauri stars. The accretion rates determined forthe intermediate-mass T Tauri stars agree well with values obtained throughother methods that use near-infrared hydrogen line strengths (Muzerolle et al.1998).Comment: Latex manuscript, 18 pages, 4 figures. To appear in The Astrophysical Journa