Massive , evolved stars play a crucial role in the metal-enrichment , dust budget , and energetics of the interstellar medium ; however , the details of their evolution are uncertain because of their rarity and short lifetimes before exploding as supernovae .
Discrepancies between theoretical predictions from single-star evolutionary models and observations of massive stars have evoked a shifting paradigm that implicates the importance of binary interaction .
We present mid- to far-infrared observations from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy ( SOFIA ) of a conical “ helix ” of warm dust ( \sim 180 K ) that appears to extend from the Wolf-Rayet star WR102c .
Our interpretation of the helix is a precessing , collimated outflow that emerged from WR102c during a previous evolutionary phase as a rapidly rotating luminous blue variable .
We attribute the precession of WR102c to gravitational interactions with an unseen compact binary companion whose orbital period can be constrained to 800 \mathrm { d } < P < 1400 d from the inferred precession period , \tau _ { p } \sim 1.4 \times 10 ^ { 4 } yr , and limits imposed on the stellar and orbital parameters of the system .
Our results concur with the range of orbital periods ( P \lesssim 1500 d ) where spin-up via mass exchange is expected to occur for massive binary systems .