AAS 199th meeting, Washington, DC, January 2002
Session 137. Topics in Stellar Evolution
Display, Thursday, January 10, 2002, 9:20am-4:00pm, Exhibit Hall

## [137.07] A Very Large Bipolar Structure Associated with MWC314: An Evolved Eta Carina?

A. P. Marston, B. McCollum (SSC, Caltech)

Be and B[e] emission-line stars have emission-lines that are believed to arise from a circumstellar disk. The position of these stars in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram provides a puzzle. Are these young stars evolving towards the main sequence or are they evolved massive stars either evolving away from the main sequence or back towards it? In an effort to answer this question we have initiated an emission-line imaging survey of the circumstellar environments of Be and B[e] stars. Our intention is to look for structures indicative of prior stellar evolution and/or structures providing further evidence of the existence of circumstellar disks. In our initial set of observations of the environments of the B[e] star MWC314, we show it to have a very large (>15\prime) bipolar structure associated with it. Such a structure is immediately indicative of an outflow restricted by the presence of a circumstellar disk. The bipolar structure is consistent with radio recombination lines observed at 57 km/s. This places the object at a distance of approximately 3kpc, based on galactic rotation in this portion of the sky. The total length of the bipolar is therefore over 13pc. We suggest that MWC314 is an evolved massive star with the tentative suggestion that it has evolved from a prior Luminous Blue Variable phase. Togther with its high luminosity, this would indicate that MWC314 is the kind of object that Eta Carina could evolve into.