Dust Formation in Massive WR+O Binaries: Recent Results
Loading...
Date
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Description
The massive, luminous Population I Wolf-Rayet stars can be considered as stars with the highest known sustained mass loss rates. Around 10% of WR stars may form carbon-rich dust in their dense and inhomogeneous winds. Though we are yet to find how dust is formed in such an extremely hostile environment, we have made substantial progress over the past decade. Here we discuss the results of recent high-resolution mid-infrared imaging of a sample of the most prodigious WR 'dustars'. This allows one to map rapidly changing dust-forming regions and derive some basic properties of the freshly formed dust.
6 pages, 3 figures; Proceedings of the Workshop "Massive Stars in Interacting Binaries", eds. N. St-Louis and A. F. J. Moffat, ASP Conference Series, in press
6 pages, 3 figures; Proceedings of the Workshop "Massive Stars in Interacting Binaries", eds. N. St-Louis and A. F. J. Moffat, ASP Conference Series, in press