HST Polarimetric Imaging of the Born-Again Star V605 Aquilae

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Scientific paper

V605 Aql, the central star of the faint planetary nebula Abell 58, experienced a very fast helium-shell thermal pulse event, beginning in the second decade of the 20th century. It had changed from a hot PN nucleus to become a cool, hydrogen-deficient carbon red giant by 1919, and then by 1923 disappeared optically inside a dusty envelope. By the 1980's the star had again returned to a high surface temperature, as shown by the appearance of high-excitation Wolf-Rayet emission features in the scattered light emerging from a surrounding dusty compact nebula.
We imaged the compact nebula with the Hubble Space Telescope in March-April 2009, using the WFPC2 camera in polarimetric mode. The nebula has a diameter of about 1 arcsec, and is crossed by a dark band that hides any direct view of the star itself. Thus the nebula appears to have a toroidal structure seen approximately edge-on, from which light from the star emerges perpendicularly before being scattered into our line of sight. By comparing our new images with previous HST images obtained in 1991 and 2001, we have detected the expansion of the material ejected in the 1919 event. We will also report polarimetry that tests our model of a central star seen only through starlight scattered from the poles of a dense dusty disk.
Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Supported by STScI research grant GO-11985.

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