Bipolar Symbiotic Planetary Nebulae in the Thermal-IR: M2-9, Mz3, and He2-104

Abstract

We present thermal-IR images of three extreme bipolar objects, M2-9, Mz3, and He2-104. They are bipolar planetary nebulae with bright central stars and are thought to be powered by symbiotic binary systems. The mid-IR images spatially resolve the SEDs of the central engines from the surrounding nebulae. A warm dust component of several hundred degrees can account for the core emission, while a cooler component of about 100 K produces the more extended emission from the bipolar lobes. In every case, the dust mass for the unresolved core region is orders of magnitude less than that in the extended lobes, raising doubts that the hypothetical disks in the core could have been responsible for pinching the waists of the nebulae. We find total masses of roughly 0.5-1 Msun in the nebulae of M2-9 and Mz3, requiring that this material was donated by intermediate-mass progenitor stars. The mass of He2-104's nebula is much lower, and any extended emission is too faint to detect in our images. Extended dust around both M2-9 and Mz3 resembles the distribution of ionized gas. Our images of Mz3 have the highest signal-to-noise in the extended polar lobes, and we show that the fairly uniform color temperature derived from our images can explain the 110 K dust component that dominates the far-IR SED. In the case of Mz3, most of the mass traced by dust is concentrated at high latitudes.