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Register a new userVLTI-AMBER velocity-resolved aperture-synthesis imaging of Eta Carinae with a spectral resolution of 12000. Studies of the primary star wind and innermost wind-wind collision
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Context. The mass loss from massive stars is not understood well. Eta Car is a unique object for studying the massive stellar wind during the LBV phase. It is also an eccentric binary with a period of 5.54 yr. The nature of both stars is uncertain, although we know from X-ray studies that there is a wind-wind collision whose properties change with orbital phase. Methods. Observations of Eta Car were carried out with the ESO VLTI and the AMBER instrument between approximately five and seven months before the August 2014 periastron passage. Velocity-resolved aperture-synthesis images were reconstructed from the spectrally dispersed interferograms. Interferometric studies can provide information on the binary orbit, the primary wind, and the wind collision. Results. We present velocity-resolved aperture-synthesis images reconstructed in more than 100 different spectral channels distributed across the Br Gamma 2.166 micrometer emission line. The intensity distribution of the images strongly depends on wavelength. At wavelengths corresponding to radial velocities of approximately -140 to -376 km/s measured relative to line center, the intensity distribution has a fan-shaped structure. At the velocity of -277 km/s, the position angle of the symmetry axis of the fan is ~ 126 degree. The fan-shaped structure extends approximately 8.0 mas (~ 18.8 au) to the southeast and 5.8 mas (~ 13.6 au) to the northwest, measured along the symmetry axis at the 16% intensity contour. The shape of the intensity distributions suggests that the obtained images are the first direct images of the innermost wind-wind collision zone. Therefore, the observations provide velocity-dependent image structures that can be used to test three-dimensional hydrodynamical, radiative transfer models of the massive interacting winds of Eta Car.
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We obtained near-infrared long-baseline interferometry of IRC+10420 with the AMBER instrument of ESOs Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) in low and high spectral resolution (HR) mode to probe the photosphere and the innermost circumstellar environment of this rapidly evolving yellow hypergiant. In the HR observations, the visibilities show a noticeable drop across the Brackett gamma (BrG) line on all three baselines, and we found differential phases up to -25 degrees in the redshifted part of the BrG line and a non-zero closure phase close to the line center. The calibrated visibilities were corrected for AMBERs limited field-of-view to appropriately account for the flux contribution of IRC+10420s extended dust shell. We derived FWHM Gaussian sizes of 1.05 +/- 0.07 and 0.98 +/- 0.10 mas for IRC+10420s continuum-emitting region in the H and K bands, respectively, and the BrG-emitting region can be fitted with a geometric ring model with a diameter of 4.18 +0.19/-0.09 mas, which is approximately 4 times the stellar size. The geometric model also provides some evidence that the BrG line-emitting region is elongated towards a position angle of 36 degrees, well aligned with the symmetry axis of the outer reflection nebula. The HR observations were further analyzed by means of radiative transfer modeling using CMFGEN and the 2-D Busche & Hillier codes. Our spherical CMFGEN model poorly reproduces the observed line shape, blueshift, and extension, definitively showing that the IRC+10420 outflow is asymmetric. Our 2-D radiative transfer modeling shows that the blueshifted BrG emission and the shape of the visibility across the emission line can be explained with an asymmetric bipolar outflow with a high density contrast from pole to equator (8-16), where the redshifted light is substantially diminished.
We report on the first detection of a global change in the X-ray emitting properties of a wind-wind collision, thanks to XMM-Newton observations of the massive SMC system HD5980. While its lightcurve had remained unchanged between 2000 and 2005, the X-ray flux has now increased by a factor of ~2.5, and slightly hardened. The new observations also extend the observational coverage over the entire orbit, pinpointing the lightcurve shape. It has not varied much despite the large overall brightening, and a tight correlation of fluxes with orbital separation is found, without any hysteresis effect. Moreover, the absence of eclipses and of absorption effects related to orientation suggests a large size for the X-ray emitting region. Simple analytical models of the wind-wind collision, considering the varying wind properties of the eruptive component in HD5980, are able to reproduce the recent hardening and the flux-separation relationship, at least qualitatively, but they predict a hardening at apastron and little change in mean flux, contrary to observations. The brightness change could then possibly be related to a recently theorized phenomenon linked to the varying strength of thin-shell instabilities in shocked wind regions.
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