Do Water Fountain Jets Really Indicate the Onset of the Morphological Metamorphosis of Circumstellar Envelopes?

The small-scale bipolar jets having short dynamical ages from "water fountain (WF)" sources are regarded as an indication of the onset of circumstellar envelope morphological metamorphosis of intermediate-mass stars. Such process usually happens at the end of the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase. However, recent studies found that WFs could be AGB stars or even early planetary nebulae. This fact prompted the idea that WFs may not necessarily be objects at the beginning of the morphological transition process. In the present work, we show that WFs could have different envelope morphologies by studying their spectral energy distribution profiles. Some WFs have spherical envelopes that resembles usual AGB stars, while others have aspherical envelopes which are more common to post-AGB stars. The results imply that WFs may not represent the earliest stage of the morphological metamorphosis. We further argue that the dynamical age of a WF jet, which can be calculated from maser proper motions, may not be the real age of the jet. The dynamical age cannot be used to justify the moment when the envelope begins to become aspherical, nor to tell the concrete evolutionary status of the object. A WF jet could be the innermost part of a larger well-developed jet, which is not necessarily a young jet.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

CO Structure of the 21 μm Source IRAS 22272+5435: A Sign of a Jet Launch?

We report the results of radio interferometric observations of the 21 μm source IRAS 22272+5435 in the CO J = 2-1 line. 21 μm sources are carbon-rich objects in the post-asymptotic-giant-branch phase of evolution, which show an unidentified emission feature at 21 μm. Since 21 μm sources usually also have circumstellar molecular envelopes, the mapping of CO emission from the envelope will be useful in tracing the nebular structure. From observations made with the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy, we find that a torus and spherical wind model can explain only part of the CO structure. An additional axisymmetric region created by the interaction between an invisible jet and ambient material is suggested

Identifying Young Stellar Objects in the Outer Galaxy: l = 224 deg Region in Canis Major

We study a very young star-forming region in the outer Galaxy that is the most concentrated source of outflows in the Spitzer Space Telescope GLIMPSE360 survey. This region, dubbed CMa-l224, is located in the Canis Major OB1 association. CMa-l224 is relatively faint in the mid-infrared, but it shines brightly at the far-infrared wavelengths as revealed by the Herschel Space Observatory data from the Hi-GAL survey. Using the 3.6 and 4.5 $\mu$m data from the Spitzer/GLIMPSE360 survey, combined with the JHK$_s$ 2MASS and the 70-500 $\mu$m Herschel/Hi-GAL data, we develop a young stellar object (YSO) selection criteria based on color-color cuts and fitting of the YSO candidates' spectral energy distributions with YSO 2D radiative transfer models. We identify 293 YSO candidates and estimate physical parameters for 210 sources well-fit with YSO models. We select an additional 47 sources with GLIMPSE360-only photometry as `possible YSO candidates'. The vast majority of these sources are associated with high H$_2$ column density regions and are good targets for follow-up studies. The distribution of YSO candidates at different evolutionary stages with respect to Herschel filaments supports the idea that stars are formed in the filaments and become more dispersed with time. Both the supernova-induced and spontaneous star formation scenarios are plausible in the environmental context of CMa-l224. However, our results indicate that a spontaneous gravitational collapse of filaments is a more likely scenario. The methods developed for CMa-l224 can be used for larger regions in the Galactic plane where the same set of photometry is available.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series; 54 pages including appendice

Shaping the Envelope of the Asymptotic Giant Branch Star W43A with a Collimated Fast Jet

One of the major puzzles in the study of stellar evolution is the formation process of bipolar and multipolar planetary nebulae. There is growing consensus that collimated jets create cavities with dense walls in the slowly expanding (10-20 km s-1) envelope ejected in previous evolutionary phases, leading to the observed morphologies. However, the launching of the jet and the way it interacts with the circumstellar material to create such asymmetric morphologies have remained poorly known. Here we present for the first time CO emission from the asymptotic giant branch star W43A that traces the whole stream of a jet, from the vicinity of its driving stellar system out to the regions where it shapes the circumstellar envelope. We found that the jet has a launch velocity of 175 km s-1 and decelerates to a velocity of 130 km s-1 as it interacts with circumstellar material. The continuum emission reveals a bipolar shell with a compact bright dot in the center that pinpoints the location of the driving source of the jet. The kinematical ages of the jet and the bipolar shell are equal, τ ∼ 60 yr, indicating that they were created simultaneously, probably by a common underlying mechanism, and in an extremely short time. These results provide key initial conditions for the theoretical models that aim to explain the formation of bipolar morphologies in the circumstellar envelopes of low- A nd intermediate-mass stars. © 2020. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.This Letter makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2016.1.00540.S. ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), MOST and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ. The VLBA is operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. J.F.G. is partially supported by MINECO (Spain) grant AYA2017-84390-C2-R (co-funded by FEDER) and by the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709). H.I. and G.O. are supported by the MEXT KAKENHI program (16H02167). H.I. and J.F.G. were supported by the Invitation Program for Foreign Researchers of the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS grant S14128). G.O. was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery project DP180101061 of the Australian government, and the grants of CAS LCWR 2018-XBQNXZ-B-021 and National Key R&D Program 2018YFA0404602 of China. D.T. was supported by the ERC consolidator grant 614264. The authors are grateful to Bruce Balick for careful reading of the Letter and valuable suggestions and comments.Peer reviewe