Lunar occultation observations of M 8E-IR.

Three lunar occultations of the young stellar object M8E-IR were observed at 3.8 and 10 microns. Two components of the source can be distinguished. The smaller one is hotter and dominates the emission of M8E-IR at wavelengths shorter than 10 microns. Its narrowest projection on the sky has full width at half intensity of 6 milliarcseconds (mas), corresponding to about 11 AU at 1.8 kpc distance. The small component is probably thermal emission from dust grains heated by the young star and distributed over length scales comparable to the size of our solar system. The projections of the source intensity distribution along the three directions of the observed occultations suggest that the small component is a disk seen nearly edge-on.