The probable dust formation episode around rho Cassiopeiae.
Abstract
By comparing IRAS photometry with previous 10-micron data, it appears that dust formed in the circumstellar envelope around the supergiant G star, Rho Cas, sometime between 1973 and 1983. This dust formation may have been the consequence of the gas outflowing and cooling from the intense mass outburst of 1946. In 1983, the dust was detected at a temperature between 600 and 800 K at a distance between 10 to the 15th cm and 4 x 10 to the 15th cm from the star. While the dust-to-gas ratio in the circumstellar envelope may be as low as 0.00001 and thus much lower than in other mass-losing stars, the luminosity of Rho Cas is sufficiently large that radiation pressure on this dust might be dynamically important in helping to drive mass loss.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- March 1990
- DOI:
- 10.1086/168496
- Bibcode:
- 1990ApJ...351..583J
- Keywords:
-
- Cosmic Dust;
- G Stars;
- Infrared Photometry;
- Stellar Envelopes;
- Supergiant Stars;
- Infrared Astronomy Satellite;
- Interstellar Matter;
- Radiation Pressure;
- Stellar Mass Ejection;
- Astrophysics