Massive evolved stars can produce large amounts of dust, and far-infrared (IR) data are essential for determining the contribution of cold dust to the total dust mass. Using Herschel, we search for cold dust in three very dusty massive evolved stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud: R71 is a Luminous Blue Variable, HD36402 is a Wolf-Rayet triple system, and IRAS05280-6910 is a red supergiant. We model the spectral energy distributions using radiative transfer codes and find that these three stars have mass-loss rates up to 10^-3 solar masses/year, suggesting that high-mass stars are important contributors to the life-cycle of dust. We found far-IR excesses in two objects, but these excesses appear to be associated with ISM and star-forming regions. Cold dust (T < 100 K) may thus not be an important contributor to the dust masses of evolved stars.
@article{arxiv.1005.5167,
title = {Cold Dust in Three Massive Evolved Stars in the LMC},
author = {M. L. Boyer and B. Sargent and J. Th. van Loon and S. Srinivasan and G. C. Clayton and F. Kemper and L. J. Smith and M. Matsuura and Paul M. Woods and M. Marengo and M. Meixner and C. Engelbracht and K. D. Gordon and S. Hony and R. Indebetouw and K. Misselt and K. Okumura and P. Panuzzo and D. Riebel and J. Roman-Duval and M. Sauvage and G. C. Sloan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1005.5167},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
accepted to A&A as part of the Herschel first results special issue