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Molecular Envelopes of Planetary Nebulae and Proto-Planetary Nebulae

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

Sun Kwok*
Affiliation:
Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, U. of Calgary, Calgary, Canada T2N 1N4

Extract

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As stars evolve up the asymptotic giant branch (AGB), they begin to lose mass at a high rate, and in the process they create extended circumstellar molecular envelopes. Since the transition from AGB to planetary nebula stages is of the order of 1000 yr, the remnant of such molecular envelopes should still be observable in pro to-planetary nebulae (PPN) and planetary nebulae (PN). Recent ground-based survey of cool IRAS sources have discovered ~30 candidates of PPN (Kwok 1992). These sources show the characteristic “double-peak” energy distribution. The cool component is due to the remnant of the AGB dust envelope, and the hot component represents the reddened photosphere. The fact that the two components are clearly separated suggests that the dust envelope is well detached from the photosphere. Radiative transfer model fits to the spectral energy distributions of PPN suggest a typical separation of ~1 arc sec between the dust envelope and the photosphere, and such “hole-in-the-middle” structure can be mapped by millimeter interferometry in CO.

Type
3. Astronomical Results and Prospects
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 1994

References

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