The Serpent Eating Its Own Tail: Dust Destruction in the Apep Colliding-Wind Nebula
Fuente:
arXiv
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1866912492751421440 |
|---|---|
| author | White, Ryan M. T. Pope, Benjamin J. S. Tuthill, Peter G. Han, Yinuo Dholakia, Shashank Lau, Ryan M. Callingham, Joseph R. Richardson, Noel D. |
| author_facet | White, Ryan M. T. Pope, Benjamin J. S. Tuthill, Peter G. Han, Yinuo Dholakia, Shashank Lau, Ryan M. Callingham, Joseph R. Richardson, Noel D. |
| contents | Much of the carbonaceous dust observed in the early universe may originate from colliding wind binaries (CWBs) hosting hot, luminous Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. Downstream of the shock between the stellar winds there exists a suitable environment for dust grain formation, and the orbital motion of the stars wraps this dust into richly structured spiral geometries. The Apep system is the most extreme WR-CWB in our Milky Way: two WR stars produce a complex spiral dust nebula, whose slow expansion has been linked to a gamma-ray burst progenitor. It has been unclear whether the O-type supergiant 0.7" distant from the WR+WR binary is physically associated with the system, and whether it affects the dusty nebula. Multi-epoch VLT/VISIR and JWST/MIRI observations show that this northern companion star routinely carves a cavity in the dust nebula - the first time such an effect has been observed in a CWB - which unambiguously associates the O star as a bound component to the Apep system. These observations are used together with a new geometric model to infer the cavity geometry and the orbit of the WR+WR binary, yielding the first strong constraints on wind and orbital parameters. We confirm an orbital period of over 190 years for the inner binary - nearly an order of magnitude longer than the next longest period dust-producing WR-CWB. This, together with the confirmed classification as a hierarchical triple, cements Apep as a singular astrophysical laboratory for studying colliding winds and the terminal life stages of the most massive star systems. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_14610 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | The Serpent Eating Its Own Tail: Dust Destruction in the Apep Colliding-Wind Nebula White, Ryan M. T. Pope, Benjamin J. S. Tuthill, Peter G. Han, Yinuo Dholakia, Shashank Lau, Ryan M. Callingham, Joseph R. Richardson, Noel D. Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Astrophysics of Galaxies Much of the carbonaceous dust observed in the early universe may originate from colliding wind binaries (CWBs) hosting hot, luminous Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. Downstream of the shock between the stellar winds there exists a suitable environment for dust grain formation, and the orbital motion of the stars wraps this dust into richly structured spiral geometries. The Apep system is the most extreme WR-CWB in our Milky Way: two WR stars produce a complex spiral dust nebula, whose slow expansion has been linked to a gamma-ray burst progenitor. It has been unclear whether the O-type supergiant 0.7" distant from the WR+WR binary is physically associated with the system, and whether it affects the dusty nebula. Multi-epoch VLT/VISIR and JWST/MIRI observations show that this northern companion star routinely carves a cavity in the dust nebula - the first time such an effect has been observed in a CWB - which unambiguously associates the O star as a bound component to the Apep system. These observations are used together with a new geometric model to infer the cavity geometry and the orbit of the WR+WR binary, yielding the first strong constraints on wind and orbital parameters. We confirm an orbital period of over 190 years for the inner binary - nearly an order of magnitude longer than the next longest period dust-producing WR-CWB. This, together with the confirmed classification as a hierarchical triple, cements Apep as a singular astrophysical laboratory for studying colliding winds and the terminal life stages of the most massive star systems. |
| title | The Serpent Eating Its Own Tail: Dust Destruction in the Apep Colliding-Wind Nebula |
| topic | Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Astrophysics of Galaxies |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14610 |