FORCAST-ing the dust production of WR 137 as it approaches periastron

Wolf-Rayet stars are evolved, massive stars that have lost their outer hydrogen envelope and have extremely high mass-loss rates and temperatures. Some of these stars are seen to produce carbonaceous dust. While the dust formation is not yet fully understood, many dust-producing systems are binaries. In the long-period binary WR 137, the periastron passage of the WC7 and O9e stars triggers dust formation every 13.05 years. As the next periastron approaches, we observed the system several times during the final year of SOFIA flights. The FORCAST observations will provide clues to the temperature and composition of the dust which we present a first analysis of in this poster. We note that the dust was also recently imaged as an early-release science observation with JWST.