The continuing saga of Sakurai's object (V4334 Sgr): dust production and helium line emission

We report further UKIRT spectroscopic observations of Sakurai's object (V43 34 Sgr) made in 1999 April/May in the 1-4.75 mu m range, and find that the emission is dominated by amorphous carbon at T-d similar to 600 K. The esti mated maximum grain size is 0.6 mu m, and the mass lower limit is 1.7 +/- 0 .2 x 10(-8) M. to 8.9 +/- 0.6 x 10(-7) M. for distances of 1.1-8 kpc. For 3 .8 kpc the mass is 2.0 +/- 0.1x10(-7) M.. We also report strong He I emission at 1.083 mu m, in contrast to the stron g absorption in this line in 1998. We conclude that the excitation is colli sional, and is probably caused by a wind, consistent with the P Cygni profi le observed by Eyres et al. in 1998.