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Session 34 - New Results on the Nature of Eta Carinae.
Oral session, Wednesday, January 07
Lincoln,
The massive star Eta Carinae has been undergoing a radio outburst since 1993 which has made it one of the brightest stellar radio sources in the sky. The cause of the outburst is apparently ionization of previously neutral gas within several arcseconds (several hundredths of a parsec) of the star. The nature of the ionizing radiation is not known, but the coincidence of the radio flux increase with the X-ray outburst reported by Corcoran et al is clearly important. In this paper we report on continued monitoring of the radio outburst as the star approaches the shell phase of the 5.5-year cycle proposed by Damineli. At this stage the radio flux behaviour appears to be consistent with the presence of such a cycle.
