A disc in the heart of the Ant nebula

Abstract

We present the discovery of a silicate disc at the centre of the planetary nebula Mz3 (the Ant). The nebula was observed with MIDI on the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). The visibilities obtained at different orientations clearly indicate the presence of a dusty, nearly edge-on disc in the heart of the nebula. An amorphous silicate absorption feature is clearly seen in our mid-IR spectrum and visibility curves. We used radiative transfer Monte Carlo simulations to constrain the geometrical and physical parameters of the disc. We derive an inner radius of 9 AU (~6mas assuming D=1.4kpc). This disc is perpendicular to, but a factor of 10^{3} smaller than the optical bipolar outflow.

arXiv comment4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the "Asymmetrical Planetary Nebulae IV" conference, corrected typo

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• The expanding dusty bipolar nebula around the nova V1280 Sco
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• A disk inside the bipolar planetary nebula M2-9
• New Young Planetary Nebulae in IPHAS
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• The evolution of M 2-9 from 2000 to 2010
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• CRIRES-VLT high-resolution spectro-astrometry as a tool in the search of small structures at the cores of Planetary Nebulae
• From the atmosphere to the circumstellar environment in cool evolved stars
• Interactions in massive binary stars as seen by interferometry
• Olivier Chesneau's work on low mass stars