Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Detection Of A Far-Infrared Bow Shock Nebula Around R Hya: The First Miriad Results, T. Ueta, A. K. Speck, R. E. Stencel, F. Herwig, R. D. Gehrz, R. Szczerba, H. Izumiura, A. A. Zijlstra, W. B. Latter, M. Matsuura, M. Meixner, M. Steffen, Moshe Elitzur

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

We present the first results of the MIRIAD (MIPS InfraRed Imaging of AGB Dust shells) project using the Spitzer Space Telescope. The primary aim of the project is to probe the material distribution in the extended circumstellar envelopes (CSEs) of evolved stars and recover the fossil record of their mass-loss history. Hence, we must map the whole of the CSEs plus the surrounding sky for background subtraction while avoiding the central star that is brighter than the detector saturation limit. With our unique mapping strategy, we have achieved better than 1 MJy sr^-1 sensitivity in 3 hr of …