The Abundances of the Noble Gases Neon and Xenon in the Atmosphere of 53 Tau (HD 27295)

Abstract One line of Ne i and three lines of Xe ii are synthesized in order to derive the abundances of neon and xenon in the atmosphere of the Mn-rich star 53 Tau. Neon is clearly very underabundant in 53 Tau, its abundance must be lower than 10−3 times the solar neon abundance. Xenon is found to be overabundant with a factor of 3000 times the solar abundance which agrees well with earlier measurements. The underabundance of neon is expected from radiative acceleration calculations which show that neon has a very small radiative acceleration in the photosphere.