The inner circumstellar dust of the red supergiant Antares as seen with VLT/SPHERE/ZIMPOL

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution polarimetric imaging to observe dust clumps around Antares, providing empirical insights into the star's mass-loss processes and the early stages of dust formation.

Contribution

First direct imaging and characterization of dust clumps around Antares, linking surface activity to mass-loss mechanisms in red supergiants.

Findings

Detected a dust-containing clump close to the stellar surface.

Estimated the dust mass in the clump to be approximately 1.3 x 10^-8 solar masses.

Clump ejection likely contributes significantly to the star's mass loss.

Abstract

The processes by which red supergiants lose mass are not fully understood thus-far and their mass-loss rates lack theoretical constraints. The ambient surroundings of the nearby M0.5 Iab star Antares offers an ideal environment to obtain detailed empirical information on the outflow properties at its onset, and hence indirectly, on the mode(s) of mass loss. We present and analyse optical VLT/SPHERE/ZIMPOL polarimetric imaging with angular resolution down to 23 milli-arcsec, sufficient to spatially resolve both the stellar disk and its direct surroundings. We detect a conspicuous feature in polarised intensity that we identify as a clump containing dust, which we characterise through 3D radiative transfer modelling. The clump is positioned behind the plane of the sky, therefore has been released from the backside of the star, and its inner edge is only 0.3 stellar radii above the surface. The current dust mass in the clump is $1.3^{+0.2}_{-1.0} \times 10^{-8}$ M$_{\odot}$, though its proximity to the star implies that dust nucleation is probably still ongoing. The ejection of clumps of gas and dust makes a non-negligible contribution to the total mass lost from the star which could possibly be linked to localised surface activity such as convective motions or non-radial pulsations.