Spatially resolved imaging spectroscopy of T Tauri

Abstract

The small separation of the individual stellar components in the TTau system has prevented spectroscopy of the individual components in the near-infrared (NIR) in the past. We present NIR data (H- and K-band) on this object taken using the ALFA adaptive optics (AO) system in combination with the 3D integral field spectrograph. Except for the Brackett series seen in emission, the NIR spectra of \tts{} appear featureless, suggesting that warm dust dominates the radiation. No ro-vibrational lines of molecular hydrogen were found in close vicinity to the stars. The Brackett line emission from \ttn{} and S could not be resolved with the 3.5-m-telescope, implying that it arises within 6 AU from the stars. The line ratios between Br$\gamma$ (2.166 \mum{}) and Br10 (1.736 \mum{}) toward \ttn{} and \tts{} are similar, suggesting similar selective extinctions towards the respective emitting regions. Our results are consistent with a model that describes \tts{} as a pre-main sequence star surrounded by a small edge-on disk, leaving the polar regions relatively unobscured. We present numerical simulations which support this model.

8 pages, 3 figures, ApJ (March 2002, accepted)

References in corpus (2)

• A Third Star in the T Tauri System
• Evidence for Extinction and Accretion Variability in T Tau S

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Spatially Resolved Molecular Hydrogen Emission in the Inner 200AU Environments of Classical T Tauri Stars
• Orbits and Masses in the T Tauri System
• The circumstellar environment of T Tau S at high spatial and spectral resolution
• The Spatial Distribution of Fluorescent H${}_2$ Near T Tau
• A High Spatial Resolution Infrared View of the T Tauri Multiple System
• Variable accretion as a mechanism for brightness variations in T Tau S
• Evidence for Misaligned Disks in the T Tauri Triple System: 10 um Super-Resolution with MMTAO and Markov Chains
• A Search for Spatially Resolved Infrared Ro-Vibrational Molecular Hydrogen Emission from the Disks of Young Stars
• New Circumstellar Structure in the T Tauri System
• Spatially resolved H2 emission from the disk around T Tau N
• Examining the T Tauri system with SPHERE
• On the Nature of the T Tauri Triple System
• Mid-infrared photometry of the T Tauri triple system with kernel phase interferometry
• A triple star in disarray -- Multi-epoch observations of T Tauri with VLT-SPHERE and LBT-LUCI