Monitoring of the Mid-Infrared Silicate Features of Long Period Variable Stars

Session 63 - Stars and A Radio Source.
Oral session, Tuesday, January 14
Harbour C,

[63.03] Monitoring of the Mid-Infrared Silicate Features of Long Period Variable Stars

M. J. Creech-Eakman, R. E. Stencel (U. Denver)

We present photometric and some spectroscopic data on over thirty oxygen-rich Long Period Variable stars which we have been monitoring from 8/95 to 12/96. The photometric data was taken with Denver University's TNTCAM (Ten and Twenty Micron Camera -- Klebe, Dahm and Stencel, 1995) using narrow band filters over the wavelength region from 4.8 to 24 microns on 8 separate monitoring campaigns, mostly at the Wyoming Infrared Observatory. Wavelengths were selected to help characterize the silicate emission profile and to detect changes therein. The spectroscopic data was obtained using CGS3 in two wavebands, from 7-14 and 16-24 microns, at UKIRT during 3 different service observing campaigns. Our results are presented along with the rationale for our long term observing campaign and modelling/explanations for the variability we have observed to date. We would like to thank WIRO for their support of our observing runs and UKIRT for support via their service observing programs. We would also like to acknowledge the partial support of M. Creech-Eakman by NASA under grant NGT-51290.

Program listing for Tuesday