The Keck Aperture Masking Experiment: Near-Infrared Sizes of Dusty Wolf-Rayet Stars

Simple item page
dc.creatorMonnier, J. D.
dc.creatorTuthill, P. G.
dc.creatorDanchi, W. C.
dc.creatorMurphy, N.
dc.creatorHarries, T. J.
dc.date2006-10-14
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T10:40:30Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T10:40:30Z
dc.descriptionWe report the results of a high angular resolution near-infrared survey of dusty Wolf-Rayet stars using the Keck-1 Telescope, including new multi-wavelength images of the pinwheel nebulae WR 98a, WR 104, and WR 112. Angular sizes were measured for an additional 8 dusty WR stars using aperture masking interferometry, allowing us to probe characteristics sizes down to ~20 milliarcseconds (~40 AU for typical sources). With angular sizes and specific fluxes, we can directly measure the wavelength-dependent surface brightness and size relations for our sample. We discovered tight correlations of these properties within our sample which could not be explained by simple spherically-symmetric dust shells or even the more realistic ``pinwheel nebula'' (3-D) radiative transfer model, when using optical constants of Zubko. While the tightly-correlated surface brightness relations we uncovered offer compelling indirect evidence of a shared and distinctive dust shell geometry amongst our sample, long-baseline interferometers should target the marginally-resolved objects in our sample in order to conclusively establish the presence or absence of the putative underyling colliding wind binaries thought to produce the dust shells around WC Wolf-Rayets.
dc.descriptionAccepted by Astrophysical Journal
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0610437
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0610437
dc.identifierAstrophys.J.655:1033-1045,2007
dc.identifierdoi:10.1086/509873
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/181356
dc.subjectAstrophysics
dc.titleThe Keck Aperture Masking Experiment: Near-Infrared Sizes of Dusty Wolf-Rayet Stars
dc.typetext

Files

Collections

arXiv