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LibraryE.P. Lieb (Univ. Denver), R.M. Lau (IPAC), J.L. Hoffman (Univ. Denver), T. Onaka (Univ. Tokyo), P.M. Williams (Royal Obs. Edinburgh), Y. Han (Caltech), K. Taniguchi, K. Taniguchi (Nat. Astron. Obs. Japan), A.A.C. Sander (Univ. Heidelberg), K. Hamaguchi (NASA Goddard, Univ. Maryland), G. Weigelt (MPIRA Bonn), S.V. Marchenko (ADNET Systems), M.J. Hankins (Arkansas Tech.), N.D. Richardson (Embry-Riddle Aero. Univ., Prescott, AZ), G.C. Sloan (STScI, UNC Chapel Hill), A.F.J. Moffatt (Univ. Montreal), H. Matsuhara (Inst. Space & Astron. Sci. Japan), M.F. Corcoran (Catholic Univ., NASA Goddard), T.R. Gull (NASA Goddard), O.C. Jones (UKATC, Edinburgh), T.I. Madura (San Jose State), M. Garcia Marin (STScI), F. Millour (Obs. Cote d'Azur), M.R. Morris (UCLA), P.W. Morris (Caltech), C.M.P. Russell (Univ. Delaware), J. Sanchez-Bermudez (UNAM), A. Soulain (Univ. Sydney), P. Tuthill (Univ. Sydney)
2026, AJ, submitted
Carbon-rich Wolf-Rayet binaries with O-type companions are key producers of carbonaceous dust. The Wolf-Rayet binary WR 140 is a principal example of such a system; it produces dust from colliding winds periodically every 7.93 yr. Using JWST MIRI images, we studied the dust color temperature of circumstellar dust around WR 140 and measured a shallow radial temperature profile α r-0.15 inconsistent with dust in radiative equilibrium with a central heating source, $alpha; r-0.4. This suggests the presence of nano-sized, stochastically heated grains in the circumstellar shells. We also used the numerical dust emission modeling tool DustEm to analyze the spectral energy distributions of all the dust shells detected by MIRI around WR 140 and to quantify the dust masses of both the nanodust (a ≤ 0.001 µm) and small grain (a ≤ 0.1 µm) populations. We identify a dust survival rate of 30% out to at least 50,000 au from the central binary and infer that most of the dust processing concludes within the first 10,000 au. These results demonstrate that WR 140 is producing nanodust that survives its intense stellar environment.
Last modified 21 September, 2026. © Gregory C. Sloan and others.