Animation of Apep's Rotation (IMAGE)
Caption
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 centre. 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.
Credit
Peter Tuthill/University of Sydney/ESO
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