This image is a composite of data collected from the near-infrared camera (NACO) together with longer wavelength data in the thermal infrared (from the VISIR instrument). Both instruments are on the European Southern Observatory's VLT telescopes, Mt Paranal, Chile. The mulit-colour collage renders the central stars of the system in blue-white at the core, with the fainter companion to the North and a bit West of the heart of the system (actually, another binary so close that it can't be resolved here). Surrounding this triple star is the extended dust plume, about 12 arcseconds across, rendered in orange-red. The thermal infrared radiation coming from this elegantly coiled tail is believed to arise from a vast plume of warm dust streaming out into space.

Composite images Near and Mid Infrared:
Fullsize Original 12Mb file
Large JPG 340Kb file
Screen JPG 130Kb file

Image of Apep captured at 8 microns in the thermal infrared with the VISIR camera on the European Southern Observatory's VLT telescope, Mt Paranal, Chile. The system can be seen to be a binary, with a much fainter companion to the North and a bit West of the heart of the system. This companion is not believed to play a role in the sculping of the extended dust plume, about 12 arcseconds across. The origin of this structure comes from the central region, believed itself to contain a binary (the whole thing being a triple star).

MATERIALS:
  2K gif file. Other sizes or adjustments available
 

This animated gif is intended to illustrate the geometry of the structure that we have witnessed in the Apep system. From a single image, it is harder to understand the 3-D structure. The central binary (only: not the wider Northern companion in the triple) is illustrated as the blue star at the center. The geometry given is that believed typical for a Wolf-Rayet colliding pinwheel system: that is an optically thin dust plume distributed over the surface of a cone that is dictated by the colliding winds. The whole outflow structure is wrapped into a spiral by the orbital motion of the presumed central binary. Further the dust formation has a specific onset and cessation, which truncate the spiral at the outer and inner limits (for example, giving rise to the notable elliptical hole). Note this is a toy animation to illustrate a fly-around of the structure, and not a model fitted to the data that describes the dust flow process. The looping animation proceeds for about half an orbit (say roughly 60 years) with a pause at about the present epoch. Note that the motion we actually recorded with VISIR in the real data only spans 3 years.

MATERIALS:
  Infinite looping gif.
  Loops 5 times then stops (for presenations).