Dust-scattered FUV halo around Spica

The far ultraviolet (FUV) wavelength (900-1750A) range includes a wealth of important astrophysical information related to the cooling of hot gas, fluorescent emission from H2 molecules, and starlight scattered off dust particles. Among these, we would like to focus on the scattered emission of the central star by dust with the example of the FUV halo surrounding ${\alpha}$ Vir (Spica). While scattering properties of dust have been studied with the GALEX data, the improved dataset of STSAT-1 revealed many detailed structures of this interesting region. For example, the FUV continuum map obtained from the STSAT-1 observations shows enhanced emission in the southern part of the Spica halo region, where the dust level is also high. In fact, the FUV continuum intensity is seen to have a good correlation with the IRAS 100${\mu}m$ emission data. It is also seen that the scattered spectrum is softer than the original one emitted by the central star, which is attributed to the increase in the dust-scattering albedo with wavelength. We have developed a Monte Carlo code that simulates dust scattering of light including multiple encounters. The code is applied to the present Spica halo region to obtain the scattering properties such as the albedo and the phase function asymmetry factor.