Description
While the importance of dusty asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars to galactic chemical enrichment is widely recognized, a sophisticated understanding of the dust formation and wind-driving mechanisms has proven elusive due in part to the difficulty in spatially resolving the dust-formation regions themselves. We have observed 20 dust-enshrouded AGB stars as part of the Keck Aperture Masking Experiment, resolving all of them in multiple near-infrared bands between 1.5 and 3.1um.
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