AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 82 Ground Based Optical Interferometry
Poster, Tuesday, 9:20am-6:30pm, January 10, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[82.07] IOTA interferometer observations of the B[e] star/X-ray transient object CI Cam.

N.D. Thureau (University of Michigan), W. Traub (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), R. Millan-Gabet (California Institute of Technology), J.D. Monnier, E. Pedretti (University of Michigan), J.-P. Berger (Observatoire de Grenoble), P. Schloerb (University of Massachusetts)

We present the results from an observing campaign on the star CI Cam carried out at the IOTA interferometer in November-December 2004 using the IONIC 3 telescope beam combiner in the H spectral band with projected baselines in the range 10-36m. CI Cam is a known B[e] star and X-ray transient source and has been intensively observed since its powerful X-ray, radio and optical outburst occurred in April 1998.

Our visibility measurements put strong constraints on the nature of the source and we can rule out all existing SED models available in the literature. Our new results are in agreement with previous observations of CI Cam obtained with IOTA2 in the H and K' spectral bands in September-November 1998, indicating the infrared excess is long-lived and not directly associated with the outburst. We have explored new models that can better fit our observations.

Additionally, we have measured small non-zero closure phases which are the signature of asymmetries in the brightness distribution function.

Financial support for NDT is provided by the European Commission through a Marie Curie Outgoing International Fellowships MOIF-CT-2004-002990.


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