2010/11/04 by B. L. de Vries, M. Min, de Vries, B. L. +7
Physics and Astronomy · #Abundance (ecology) #Astro and Planetary Science #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Asymptotic giant branch #Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) #FOS: Physical sciences #Forsterite #Geology #Mineralogy #Physics #Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.EP #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1011.1123
Conference proceedings for "Why Galaxies Care About AGB stars 2", Vienna 2010
arxiv created 2010/11/04 · arxiv updated 2010/11/05
We present a diagnostic tool to determine the forsterite abundance of the dust ejected by AGB stars. Our method is based on a comparison between the observed strength of spectral bands of forsterite and model calculations. We show that the 11.3 μm forsterite band is a robust indicator of the forsterite abundance of the current mass-loss period for AGB stars with an optically thick dust shell. The 33.6 μm band of forsterite is sensitive to changes in the density and the geometry of the emitting dust shell, and so a less robust indicator. We apply this method to six high mass-loss rate AGB stars, showing that AGB stars can have forsterite abundances of 12% by mass and higher, which is more than the previously found maximum abundance of 5%.