An Apparent Precessing Helical Outflow from a Massive Evolved Star: Evidence for Binary Interaction

Abstract

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 (SOFIA) of a conical "helix" of warm dust ($\sim 180$ 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 $800\mathrm{d}<P<1400$ d from the inferred precession period, ${\tau }_p\sim 1.4\times 10^4$ yr, and limits imposed on the stellar and orbital parameters of the system. Our results concur with the range of orbital periods ($P\lesssim 1500$ d) where spin-up via mass exchange is expected to occur for massive binary systems.

13 pages, 6 figures, Accepted to ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• SOFIA/FORCAST Galactic Center Legacy Survey: Overview
• The Origins of X-ray Line Emissions in Circinus~X-1 at Very Low X-ray Flux
• Exploring the multifaceted circumstellar environment of the Luminous Blue Variable HR Carinae
• An Infrared Study of the Dust Properties and Geometry of the Arched Filaments HII Region with SOFIA/FORCAST
• The Luminous Blue Variable RMC127 as seen with ALMA and ATCA
• Analysis of the WN star WR 102c, its WR nebula, and the associated cluster of massive stars in the Sickle Nebula
• The Galactic Center in Color: Measuring Extinction with High-Proper-Motion Stars
• Study of the Galactic radio sources in the SCORPIO survey resolved by ATCA at 2.1 GHz