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 (V4334 Sgr) made in 1999 April/May in the 1–4.75 μm range, and find that the emission is dominated by amorphous carbon at Td∼600 K. The estimated maximum grain size is 0.6 μm, and the mass lower limit is 1.7±0.2×10−8 M⊙ to 8.9±0.6×10−7 M⊙ for distances of 1.1–8 kpc. For 3.8 kpc the mass is 2.0±0.1×10−7 M⊙. We also report strong He i emission at 1.083 μm, in contrast to the strong absorption in this line in 1998. We conclude that the excitation is collisional, and is probably caused by a wind, consistent with the P Cygni profile observed by Eyres et al. in 1998.