Mass-Loss Rates in High-Latitude OH/IR Stars

Details Mass-Loss Rates in High-Latitude OH/IR Stars Mass-Loss Rates in High-Latitude OH/IR Stars

Dec 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...211.5119w&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #211, #51.19; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.818

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Scientific paper

OH/IR stars are post-AGB stars that experience violent episodes of mass loss. They exhibit OH masers and are surrounded by expanding shells of dust that re-radiate starlight in the infrared. However, sources that lie more than 10 degrees above or below the Galactic plane comprise a well-defined locus in plots of dust expansion velocity vs. MIR color, while their lower-latitude counterparts form a scatter plot. MIR color refers to the log of the 25- to 12-micron flux ratio. It is governed by bursts of mass loss, since the resulting dusty shells around these stars transform the stellar SED into MIR radiation. This MIR radiation is what pumps the OH masers. We hypothesized that these high-latitude OH/IR stars are undergoing intrinsically different episodes of mass loss than lower-latitude OH/IR stars, and that this difference is the reason for the limited range in MIR color. Using the public domain radiative transfer code DUSTY, we find that shorter, more extreme bursts of mass loss produce models with appropriate limits in MIR color over the lifetime of a typical OH maser. These catastrophic episodes of mass loss can be achieved by lower-mass stars undergoing Helium Flashes. This agrees with the notion that higher-latitude stars tend to have lower initial masses, since longer lifetimes allow their orbits to be perturbed to greater inclinations outside the galactic disk.

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