Adaptive optics imaging of P Cygni in H ^*

¹ Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Département Fresnel, GI2T, F-06460 Saint Vallier de Thiey, France
² UMR 6525 Astrophysique, Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis Parc Valrose, F-06108 Nice Cedex 2, France
³ Collège de France, 11 Pl. M. Berthelot, F-75321 Paris, France
⁴ European Southern Observatory, Alonso de Cordoba 3107, Santiago, Chile
⁵ Office National d'Études et de Recherches Aérospatiales, Département d'Optique Théorique et Appliquée Imagerie Haute Résolution - Optique Adaptative, 29 Av. de la Division Leclerc, F-92320 Chatillon, France

Send offprint request to: O. Chesneau

Received: 10 January 2000
Accepted: 20 March 2000

Abstract

We obtained H diffraction limited data of the LBV star P Cyg using the ONERA Adaptive Optics (AO) facility BOA at the OHP 1.52 m telescope on October 1997. Taking P Cyg and the reference star 59 Cyg AO long exposures, we find that P Cyg clearly exhibits a large and diffuse intensity distribution compared to the 59 Cyg's point-like source. A deconvolution of P Cyg using 59 Cyg as the Point Spread Function was performed by means of the Richardson-Lucy algorithm. P Cyg clearly appears as an unresolved star surrounded by a clumped envelope. The reconstructed image of P Cyg is compared to similar spatial resolution maps obtained from radio aperture synthesis imaging. We put independent constraints on the physics of P Cyg which agree well with radio results. We discuss future possibilities to constrain the wind structure of P Cyg by using multi-resolution imaging, coronagraphy and long baseline interferometry to trace back its evolutionary status.