IR emission from circumstellar envelopes of C-rich stars

Abstract

The reliability of a theoretical model that solves the radiative transfer equation in dust clouds surrounding a central star is checked. In particular, it is found that both classical scattering by dust and the back-heating effects are negligible in the radiative transfer when envelopes similar to IRC+10216 are taken into consideration. In addition, new fits of IRC+10216 spectra are presented which were obtained, when the source is in different luminosity phases, under the assumption that amorphous carbon grains are in the circumstellar envelope. The same model is currently used to simulate the emission from carbon-rich sources showing the silicon carbide feature at 11.3 microns