OH/IR stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud: the observations

Abstract

In 1985 we began a search for OH/IR objects in the Magellanic Clouds. The first detection was reported by Wood, Bessell & Whiteoak (1986). Subsequent searches have yielded several of these objects and other highly-evolved stars obscured by thick circumstellar shells.The 1612-MHz OH observations were made using the Parkes 64-m radio telescope. Most of the observations utilized a dual-channel cryogenic receiver providing a system temperature of around 38 K on cold sky. The OH spectra were obtained with the Parkes digital correlator split into 512-channel segments. Bandwidths of 2 MHz provided a resolution of 7.8 kHz (equivalent to 1.5 km s−1 in radial velocity) after Hanning smoothing. The mode of observation has been described by Whiteoak and Gardner (1976). Typically, an integration period of 60 minutes was used; this yielded a detection limit (3a) of around 50 mJy for an OH feature. Detected emission was reobserved with a 1-MHz bandwidth. A search was also made for 1665-MHz OH emission.