RICHICHI , Andrea

The study of the atmosphere of red supergiant stars in general and of Betelgeuse (alpha Orionis) in particular is of prime importance to understand dust formation and how mass is lost to the interstellar medium in evolved massive stars. A molecular shell, the MOLsphere (Tsuji, 2000a), in the atmosphere of Betelgeuse has been proposed to account...

AMBER is the near-IR instrument for the VLTI, which will offer the possibility of combining two or three beams from either the 8 meter VLT main telescopes or the 1.8 meter auxiliary telescopes. With spectral dispersion up to 10,000 high visibility accuracy and the ability to obtain closure phases, AMBER will offer the means to perform high...

Aims. We aim to study the geometry and kinematics of the disk around the Be star $\alpha$ Arae as a function of wavelength, especially across the Br$\gamma$ emission line. The main purpose of this paper is to answer the question about the nature of the disk rotation around Be stars. Methods. We use the VLTI/AMBER instrument operating in the K...

The mid-infrared interferometric instrument MIDI has performed its first scientific observations on the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) in June 2003. It allows interferometric observations over the 8--13 mu m wavelength range, with a spatial resolution up to 20 milliarcsec, a spectral resolution of 30 and 250, and an expected point...