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Description
Due to inherent difficulties involved in observations and theoretical/numerical simulations of the formation of massive stars, an understanding of the early evolutionary phases of these objects remains elusive. In particular, observationally probing circumstellar material at distances <~100AU from the central star is exceedingly difficult, as such objects are rare (and thus, on average, far away) and typically deeply embedded. Long-baseline mid-infrared interferometry provides one way of obtaining the necessary spatial resolution at appropriate wavelengths to study this class of objects, however, interpreting such observations is often difficult due to sparse spatial-frequency coverage. We aim to characterize the distribution and composition of circumstellar material around young massive stars, and to investigate exactly which physical structures in these objects are probed by long-baseline mid-infrared interferometric observations. We use the two-telescope interferometric instrument MIDI of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer of the European Southern Observatory to observe a sample of 24 intermediate- and high-mass young stellar objects in the N band (8-13 micron). We had successful fringe detections for 20 objects, and present spectrally-resolved correlated fluxes and visibility levels for projected baselines of up to 128m. We fit the visibilities with geometric models to derive the sizes of the emitting regions, as well as the orientation and elongation of the circumstellar material. A subset of 14 objects show the 10 micron silicate feature in absorption in the total and correlated flux spectra. For 13 of these objects, we were able to fit the correlated flux spectra with a simple absorption model, allowing us to constrain the composition and absorptive properties of the circumstellar material.
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