Silicate Feature Variation in Long‐period Variable Stars. I. Initial Observations

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Abstract
We report new mid-infrared spectra of five bright, long-period variable (LPV) stars, as well as related objects, obtained at the Wyoming Infrared Observatory with Denver University's medium-resolution CAESR instrument. The data, when combined with low-resolution spectrometer spectra from IRAS, show variation of the silicate feature with phase of the LPV. We perform a calculation for impingement time of the shock on the circumstellar dust shell to demonstrate that this variation could be the result of a shock-shell interaction.