The structure of the dust shells around IRC+10216

G.C. Sloan and M.P. Egan (Phillips Lab./GPOB)

1995, ApJ, 444, 452

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We have investigated IRC +10216 using a long-slit mid-infrared spectrometer and modeling the circumstellar dust distribution with a radiative transfer algorithm. Maximum entropy reconstructions of the spectral images made with the slit oriented north/south and east/west reveal three components. Two shells of cool carbon-rich dust are seen, as well as a region of blue emission between the shells, ~1" north of the central source. The dust shell structure agrees well with previous interferometric observations: a circularly symmetric inner shell enclose within an outer shell elongated roughly north/south. The blue emission appears to arise from a region of small grains of radiatively heated amorphous carbon and implies that the polar regions of the inner shell are optically thinner than the equatorial regions.

The preliminary results of this paper were presented at the Washington meeting of the AAS in January, 1994 (Sloan, Egan, and Shipman 1993, BAAS, 25, 1320). At the previous meeting of the AAS in Berkeley (June, 1993), we presented spatiograms of IRC+10216 along with the Cygnus Egg and alpha Orionis (Sloan et al. 1993, BAAS, 25, 876).

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Last modified 27 May, 2008. © Gregory C. Sloan and others.