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Understanding the formation of planetary nebulae remains elusive because inthe preceding asymtotic giant branch (AGB) phase these stars are heavilyenshrouded in an optically thick dusty envelope. To further understand themorphology of the circumstellar environments of AGB stars we observe theclosest carbon-rich AGB star IRC+10216 in scattered light. When imaged inscattered light at optical wavelengths, IRC+10216 surprisingly shows a narrowequatorial density enhancement, in contrast to the large-scale spherical ringsthat have been imaged much further out. We use radiative transfer models tointerpret this structure in terms of two models: firstly, an equatorial densityenhancement, commonly observed in the more evolved post-AGB stars, andsecondly, in terms of a dust rings model, where a local enhancement ofmass-loss creates a spiral ring as the star rotates. We conclude that bothmodels can be used to reproduce the dark lane in the scattered light images,which is caused by an equatorially density enhancement formed by dense dustrather than a bipolar outflow as previously thought. We are unable to placeconstraints on the formation of the equatorial density enhancement by a binarysystem.

Surprising detection of an equatorial dust lane on the AGB star IRC+10216