ALBERT

Description: The unprecedented quality of the observations available from the Atacama Large Millimetre/sub-millimetre Array (ALMA) calls for analysis methods making the best of them. Reconstructing in space the morphology and kinematics of radio sources is an underdetermined problem that requires imposing additional constraints for its solution. The hypothesis of rotational invariance, which is a good approximation to, or at least a good reference for the description of the gas envelopes of many evolved stars and protostars, is particularly efficient in this role. In the first part of the article, a systematic use of simulated observations allows us for identifying the main problems and for constructing quantities aimed at solving them. In particular the evaluation of the orientation of the star axis in space and the differentiation between expansion along the star axis and rotation about it are given special attention. The use of polar rather than Cartesian sky coordinates to display the results of the analysis is shown to often better match the morphology and kinematics of actual stars. The radial dependence of the gas density and temperature and the possible presence of velocity gradients are briefly considered. In the second part, these results are applied to a few stars taken as examples with the aim of evaluating their usefulness when applied to concrete cases. A third part takes stock of what precedes and formulates some guidelines for modelling the radio emission of axisymmetric radio sources, limited however to the mathematics and geometry of the problem, physics considerations being generally ignored.