4 research outputs found
SOFIA and ALMA Investigate Magnetic Fields and Gas Structures in Massive Star Formation: The Case of the Masquerading Monster in BYF 73
We present SOFIA+ALMA continuum and spectral-line polarisation data on the
massive molecular cloud BYF 73, revealing important details about the magnetic
field morphology, gas structures, and energetics in this unusual massive star
formation laboratory. The 154m HAWC+ polarisation map finds a highly
organised magnetic field in the densest, inner 0.550.40 pc portion of
the cloud, compared to an unremarkable morphology in the cloud's outer layers.
The 3mm continuum ALMA polarisation data reveal several more structures in the
inner domain, including a pc-long, 500 M "Streamer" around the
central massive protostellar object MIR 2, with magnetic fields mostly parallel
to the east-west Streamer but oriented north-south across MIR 2. The magnetic
field orientation changes from mostly parallel to the column density structures
to mostly perpendicular, at thresholds = 6.610
m, = 2.510 m, and =
427 nT. ALMA also mapped Goldreich-Kylafis polarisation in CO
across the cloud, which traces in both total intensity and polarised flux, a
powerful bipolar outflow from MIR 2 that interacts strongly with the Streamer.
The magnetic field is also strongly aligned along the outflow direction;
energetically, it may dominate the outflow near MIR 2, comprising rare evidence
for a magnetocentrifugal origin to such outflows. A portion of the Streamer may
be in Keplerian rotation around MIR 2, implying a gravitating mass 135050
M for the protostar+disk+envelope; alternatively, these kinematics
can be explained by gas in free fall towards a 95035 M object.
The high accretion rate onto MIR 2 apparently occurs through the Streamer/disk,
and could account for 33% of MIR 2's total luminosity via gravitational
energy release.Comment: 33 pages, 32 figures, accepted by ApJ. Line-Integral Convolution
(LIC) images and movie versions of Figures 3b, 7, and 29 are available at
https://gemelli.spacescience.org/~pbarnes/research/champ/papers
First radial velocity results from the MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA)
The MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA) is a dedicated
observatory of four 0.7m robotic telescopes fiber-fed to a KiwiSpec
spectrograph. The MINERVA mission is to discover super-Earths in the habitable
zones of nearby stars. This can be accomplished with MINERVA's unique
combination of high precision and high cadence over long time periods. In this
work, we detail changes to the MINERVA facility that have occurred since our
previous paper. We then describe MINERVA's robotic control software, the
process by which we perform 1D spectral extraction, and our forward modeling
Doppler pipeline. In the process of improving our forward modeling procedure,
we found that our spectrograph's intrinsic instrumental profile is stable for
at least nine months. Because of that, we characterized our instrumental
profile with a time-independent, cubic spline function based on the profile in
the cross dispersion direction, with which we achieved a radial velocity
precision similar to using a conventional "sum-of-Gaussians" instrumental
profile: 1.8 m s over 1.5 months on the RV standard star HD 122064.
Therefore, we conclude that the instrumental profile need not be perfectly
accurate as long as it is stable. In addition, we observed 51 Peg and our
results are consistent with the literature, confirming our spectrograph and
Doppler pipeline are producing accurate and precise radial velocities.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures, submitted to PASP, Peer-Reviewed and Accepte
THE GALACTIC CENSUS OF HIGH- AND MEDIUM-MASS PROTOSTARS. III. 12 CO MAPS AND PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF DENSE CLUMP ENVELOPES AND THEIR EMBEDDING GMCs
We report the second complete molecular line data release from the Census of High-and Medium-mass Protostars (CHaMP), a large-scale, unbiased, uniform mapping survey at sub-parsec resolution, of millimeter-wave line emission from 303 massive, dense molecular clumps in the Milky Way. This release is for all (CO)-C-12 J = 1 -> 0 emission associated with the dense gas, the first from Phase II of the survey, which includes (CO)-C-12, (CO)-C-13, and (CO)-O-18. The observed clump emission traced by both (CO)-C-12 and HCO+ (from Phase I) shows very similar morphology, indicating that, for dense molecular clouds and complexes of all sizes, parsec-scale clumps contain. similar to 75% of the mass, while only 25% of the mass lies in extended (>10 pc) or "low density" components in these same areas. The mass fraction of all gas above a density of 10(9) m(-3) is xi(9) greater than or similar to 50%. This suggests that parsec-scale clumps may be the basic building blocks of the molecular interstellar medium, rather than the standard GMC concept. Using (CO)-C-12 emission, we derive physical properties of these clumps in their entirety, and compare them to properties from HCO+, tracing their denser interiors. We compare the standard X-factor converting I (CO)-C-12 to N-H2 with alternative conversions, and show that only the latter give whole-clump properties that are physically consistent with those of their interiors. We infer that the clump population is systematically closer to virial equilibrium than when considering only their interiors, with perhaps half being long-lived (10s of Myr), pressure-confined entities that only terminally engage in vigorous massive star formation, supporting other evidence along these lines that was previously published.NASA/JPL [RSA-1464327]; NSF [AST-1312597]; UF Astronomy Department; University of Florida Astronomy Department; UF University Scholar's ProgramThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]