The Keck Aperture Masking Experiment: Near-Infrared Sizes of Dusty Wolf-Rayet Stars

Abstract

We report the results of a high angular resolution near-infrared survey of dusty Wolf-Rayet stars using the Keck-1 Telescope, including new multi-wavelength images of the pinwheel nebulae WR 98a, WR 104, and WR 112. Angular sizes were measured for an additional 8 dusty WR stars using aperture masking interferometry, allowing us to probe characteristics sizes down to ~20 milliarcseconds (~40 AU for typical sources). With angular sizes and specific fluxes, we can directly measure the wavelength-dependent surface brightness and size relations for our sample. We discovered tight correlations of these properties within our sample which could not be explained by simple spherically-symmetric dust shells or even the more realistic ``pinwheel nebula'' (3-D) radiative transfer model, when using optical constants of Zubko. While the tightly-correlated surface brightness relations we uncovered offer compelling indirect evidence of a shared and distinctive dust shell geometry amongst our sample, long-baseline interferometers should target the marginally-resolved objects in our sample in order to conclusively establish the presence or absence of the putative underyling colliding wind binaries thought to produce the dust shells around WC Wolf-Rayets.

Accepted by Astrophysical Journal

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• Detection of a sub-arcsecond dust shell around the Wolf-Rayet star WR 112
• Discovery of Extremely Large-Amplitude Quasi-Periodic Photometric Variability in WC9-Type Wolf-Rayet Binary, WR 104

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• Impact of orbital motion on the structure and stability of adiabatic shocks in colliding wind binaries
• Revisiting the Impact of Dust Production from Carbon-Rich Wolf-Rayet Binaries
• Pinwheels in the sky, with dust: 3D modeling of the Wolf-Rayet 98a environment
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• Radiation-driven acceleration in the expanding WR140 dust shell
• Eclipses and dust formation by WC9 type Wolf-Rayet stars
• The extreme colliding-wind system Apep: resolved imagery of the central binary and dust plume in the infrared
• VLTI/AMBER unveils a possible dusty pinwheel nebula in WR118
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• Mid-Infrared interferometry of dust around massive evolved stars
• Investigating 39 Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars with VLTI/GRAVITY: Uncovering A Long Period Binary Desert
• Emission Lines in the Near-infrared Spectra of the Infrared Quintuplet Stars in the Galactic Center
• Neon Abundances from a Spitzer/IRS Survey of Wolf-Rayet Stars
• Stagnant Shells in the Vicinity of the Dusty Wolf-Rayet-OB Binary WR 112
• Exploring dust growth in the episodic WCd system WR140
• The Keck Aperture Masking Experiment: Dust Enshrouded Red Giants
• Detecting planetary mass companions near the water frost-line using JWST interferometry
• Radio Variability from Co-Rotating Interaction Regions Threading Wolf-Rayet Winds
• Observation of double star by long-baseline interferometry
• Revealing the accelerating wind in the inner region of the colliding-wind binary WR 112