THE CARBON STAR IRAS-06088+1909

We present first-time investigations, by means of several different te chniques in the visual and infrared domains, of the source 06088+1909, discovered by the IRAS satellite and classified as a carbon star on t he basis of a SIC emission feature. Our interest for this source start ed with two lunar occultation events, which showed the presence of ext ended circumstellar emission on the scale of approximate to 0 ''.01. F ollow-up observations by photometry, polarimetry, spectroscopy, speckl e interferometry and two more lunar occultations, have revealed many i nteresting characteristics, and in particular the presence of a flatte ned shell around the central star. By combining together all available observational evidence, we have been able to infer some of the proper ties of this shell, such as its shape, size, temperature of the grains , and mechanism of polarization. The object appears as one more exampl e of the complexity existing in the environments of late-type giants a nd AGE stars, similar to well-known cases such as the Egg Nebula and t he Red Rectangle. In the case of IRAS 06088+1909, it has been possible to conduct such a study at an unprecedented level of angular resoluti on.