Prospects for the study of dust making Wolf-Rayet binaries with the VLTI-Spectro-Imager (VSI)
De Becker, M.(1), Filho, M.(2), Harris, T.(3)
(1) Institut d'Astrophyique et Géophysique, Université de Liège, Belgium
(2) CAUP, University of Porto, Portugal
(3) School of Physics, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
In response to ESO's call for proposals for second generation instruments for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), a consortium is currently developing the VLTI-Spectro-Imager (VSI). In the context of the Phase A study, a science group has prepared a science case taking advantage of the expected performances of VSI. Among several science topics, the case of dust making Wolf-Rayet binaries producing the so-called pinwheel nebulae has been considered. Here, we review the main specifications of VSI, and we provide preliminary results expected to illustrate the imaging capabilities of VSI, and the interest for the study of pinwheel nebulae similar to those formed close to well-known systems such as WR98a and WR104.
Reference: To be published in the proceedings of the ESO conference "The interferometric view on hot stars" held in Vina del Mar, Chile (2-6 March 2009), RevMexAA
Status: Conference proceedings
Weblink: http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.3026
Comments:
Email: debecker@astro.ulg.ac.be