P66	May 2001

¹ Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique - Université de Liège, Avenue de Cointe 5, 4000 Liège, Belgium
² Observatoire de Genève, CH 1290 Sauverny, Switzerland

^* Research Fellow FNRS, Belgium
^** Postdoctoral Researcher FNRS, Belgium and Visiting Astronomer, CTIO

⁺ Based on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory (La Silla, Chile) and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO).

Abstract

     Over the last years, the research on colliding winds in massive binaries has made significant progress. For instance, it has been shown that the observation of phase-locked variability of prominent optical emission lines can be used as a diagnostic to study the properties of the wind interaction in these systems.

     We report here our analysis of the binary system HD 149404. Using a large set of spectroscopic observations, we determine new spectral types and a new orbital solution. We also analyse the line profile variability of several emission lines and we briefly discuss a possible model for this system.