A spatial study of the mid-IR emission features in four Herbig Ae/Be stars

<i>Context. <i/>Infrared (IR) spectroscopy and imaging provide a prime tool to study the characteristics of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules and the mineralogy in regions of star formation. Herbig Ae/Be stars are known to have varying amounts of natal cloud material present in their vicinity.<i>Aims. <i/>Our aim is to study the characteristics of the mid-IR emission originating in Herbig Ae/Be stars, especially the extent of the emission and how this relates to the (proto-)stellar characteristics.<i>Methods. <i/>Today's powerful ground- and space-based telescopes provide images and spectra at unprecedented spectral and spatial resolution. We analyse the images and spectra from four Herbig Ae/Be stars (IRAS 06084-0611, CD-42 11721, TY CrA, and HD 176386), as obtained with TIMMI2 on the ESO 3.6 m telescope and VISIR on the VLT. These observations are supplemented with data from ISO-SWS and Spitzer-IRAC.<i>Results. <i/>We find evidence for large-scale structure and extended emission in all four sources, except for HD 176386, which only shows silicate emission, all sources show PAH emission in their spectra. In addition, a spatially resolved silicate and PAH spectrum could be extracted for TY CrA.<i>Conclusions. <i/>The variety in emission scales distinguishes two classes. In the first, the morphology and spectral characteristics resemble those of reflection nebulae. In the second, the characteristics are in-line with Herbig A stars. This separation simply reflects a difference in stellar characteristics (e.g. luminosity). In Herbig B stars, dust emission from the surroundings dominates, where for Herbig A stars, the disk dominates the emission. In this scheme, IRAS 06084-0611 and CD-42 11721 resemble reflection nebulae and HD 176386 a more typical Herbig Ae/Be star. TY CrA shows characteristics common to both <i>genuine<i/> reflection nebulae and Herbig B stars. We propose a geometry for TY CrA, with most notably, a ~70 AU inner gap in the 340 AU circumtertiary disk cleared by a fourth stellar companion.