科研之友
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摘要
Massive, evolved stars play a crucial role in the metal enrichment, dust budget, and energetics of the interstellar medium; however, the details of their evolution are uncertain because of their rarity and short lifetimes before exploding as supernovae. Discrepancies between theoretical predictions from single-star evolutionary models and observations of massive stars have evoked a shifting paradigm that implicates the importance of binary interaction. We present mid-to far-infrared observations from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy of a conical "helix" of warm dust (similar to 180 K) that appears to extend from the Wolf-Rayet star WR102c. Our interpretation of the helix is a precessing, collimated outflow that emerged from WR102c during a previous evolutionary phase as a rapidly rotating luminous blue variable. We attribute the precession of WR102c to gravitational interactions with an unseen compact binary companion whose orbital period can be constrained to 800 days < P < 1400 days from the inferred precession period, tau(p) similar to 1.4 x 10(4) yr, and limits imposed on the stellar and orbital parameters of the system. Our results concur with the range of orbital periods (P less than or similar to 1500 days) where spin-up via mass exchange is expected to occur for massive binary systems.
- 出版日期2016-2-20
