Catalog of Galactic β Cephei Stars

We present an extensive and up-to-date catalog of Galactic Beta Cephei stars.This catalog is intended to give a comprehensive overview of observationalcharacteristics of all known Beta Cephei stars. 93 stars could be confirmed tobe Beta Cephei stars. For some stars we re-analyzed published data or conductedour own analyses. 61 stars were rejected from the final Beta Cephei list, and77 stars are suspected to be Beta Cephei stars. A list of critically selectedpulsation frequencies for confirmed Beta Cephei stars is also presented. Weanalyze the Beta Cephei stars as a group, such as the distributions of theirspectral types, projected rotational velocities, radial velocities, pulsationperiods, and Galactic coordinates. We confirm that the majority of these starsare multiperiodic pulsators. We show that, besides two exceptions, the BetaCephei stars with high pulsation amplitudes are slow rotators. We construct atheoretical HR diagram that suggests that almost all 93 Beta Cephei stars areMS objects. We discuss the observational boundaries of Beta Cephei pulsationand their physical parameters. We corroborate that the excited pulsation modesare near to the radial fundamental mode in frequency and we show that the massdistribution of the stars peaks at 12 solar masses. We point out that thetheoretical instability strip of the Beta Cephei stars is filled neither at thecool nor at the hot end and attempt to explain this observation