Circumstellar Mass Loss

W.C. Danchi (University of California, Berkeley)

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Over the past few years, infrared stellar interferometry has been successfully used to probe the physical conditions of material, both gas and dust, within a few stellar radii of both young and late type stars. Present observations show more complicated morphologies of the material than previously expected, including the clumpy and episodic production of dust around late Mira and carbon stars, a new spiral morphology of dust around persistant dust producing Wolf-Rayet stars, and new insights into the disks surrounding the intermediate mass young stars, the Herbig Ae/Be stars. Methodologies as well as results will be discussed in order to facilitate the discussion.