Publications
of the
MPIfR Optical & Infrared Interferometry Group

K.-H. Hofmann, T. Blöcker, G. Weigelt, and Y. Balega:

A multiwavelength study of the AGB star CIT 3:
Bispectrum speckle interferometry and dust-shell modelling

Astronomische Gesellschaft Abstract Series (AGM 18, P99)
Five Days of Creation: Astronomy with Large Telescopes from Ground and Space
Annual Scientific Meeting of the Astronomische Gesellschaft at the Joint European and National Meeting JENAM 2001 of the European Astronomical Society and the Astronomische Gesellschaft, Sep 10-15, 2001, Munich, Germany

Abstract. CIT 3 (= WX Psc = IRC +10 011 = IRAS 01037+1219), an oxygen-rich long-period variable evolving along the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB), is one of the most extreme infrared AGB objects. This M9-10 star suffers currently from mass-loss rates close to 10-5 Msol/yr and is surrounded by an optically thick dust shell which absorbs almost all visible light radiated by the star and finally re-emits it in the infrared regime.
We present the first bispectrum speckle-interferometry observations of CIT 3 in the J-, H-, and K-band. The resolution is 48 mas, 56 mas, and 73 mas, resp. The interferograms were obtained with the Russian 6 m telescope at the Special Astrophysical Observatory in September 1999. Detailed radiative transfer calculations have been carried out and confronted with the observations taking into account the spectral energy distribution ranging from 1 μm to 1 mm, our near-infrared visibility functions at 1.24µm, 1.65µm and 2.12µm, as well as the recent 11µm interferometric measurements of Lipman et al. (2000).

bloecker@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de.
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