Sculpting a Pre-planetary Nebula with a Precessing Jet: IRAS 16342-3814

Details Sculpting a Pre-planetary Nebula with a Precessing Jet: IRAS 16342-3814 Sculpting a Pre-planetary Nebula with a Precessing Jet: IRAS 16342-3814

Mar 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005apj...622l..53s&link_type=abstract

The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 622, Issue 1, pp. L53-L56.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

23

Stars: Circumstellar Matter, Ism: Jets And Outflows, Ism: Planetary Nebulae: General, Stars: Agb And Post-Agb, Stars: Individual: Alphanumeric: Iras 16342-3814, Stars: Mass Loss

Scientific paper

We have imaged the bipolar pre-planetary nebula IRAS 16342-3814 with the Keck adaptive optics (AO) system in four near-infrared bands in the 1.6-4.7 μm range. The lobes, which showed smoothly varying brightness distributions in previous optical images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, have a limb-brightened appearance in the AO images, with a remarkable corkscrew structure inscribed on the lobe walls. A well-collimated, precessing jet with a diameter <~100 AU and a precession period <~50 yr, interacting with ambient circumstellar material, is most likely responsible for the corkscrew structure and the lobes, as indicated by a detailed comparison of our observations with published numerical simulations. The very red colors of the lobes in the near-infrared, coupled with their visibility at optical wavelengths, require that at least half, but not all, of the light of the central star be trapped by a compact circumstellar dust cloud heated to ~600-700 K and reradiated in the infrared. The lobes are thus illuminated both by the infrared light from this dust cloud as well as by the optical light from the central star.

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