Molecular Line Studies of Ballistic Stellar Interlopers Burrowing through Dense Interstellar Clouds

Details Molecular Line Studies of Ballistic Stellar Interlopers Burrowing through Dense Interstellar Clouds Molecular Line Studies of Ballistic Stellar Interlopers Burrowing through Dense Interstellar Clouds

Jan 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21541521r&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #415.21; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.264

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Scientific paper

When an intermediate-mass star speeds through a dense interstellar cloud at a high velocity, it can produce a cometary or bow shock structure due to the cloud being impacted by the intense stellar wind. This class of objects, recently discovered in an HST imaging survey, has been dubbed "ballistic stellar interlopers" (Sahai et al. 2009). Using the ARO's 12m and SMT 10m millimeter-wave dishes, we have obtained molecular line emission data towards 10 stellar interloper sources, in order to identify and characterize the dense clouds with which the interlopers are interacting. We have made small "on-the-fly" maps in the 12CO (J=2-1) and 13CO (J=2-1) lines for each cloud, and obtained spectra of high-density tracers such as N2H+ (J=3-2), HCO+ (J=3-2), CN(N=2-1), and SO(J=5-4), which probe a range of physical conditions in the interstellar clouds being impacted by the interlopers. The data have been reduced and analyzed, and preliminary estimates of the cloud temperatures (9-22 K) and 13CO optical depths (0.18-0.37) have been made. The maps, which show the emission as a function of radial velocity and spatial offset from the location of the interlopers, have helped us distinguish between the clouds interacting with the interlopers, and those which are unrelated but happen to lie along the line of sight. These data will now enable us to carry out high-resolution mm-wave interferometric observations of the interlopers in the future.
This research was performed at JPL under the Minority Education Initiatives program. RS and MM were funded by a Long Term Space Astrophysics award from NASA for this work. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. Special thanks goes to John Bieging and Bill Peters of the Arizona Radio Observatory.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Molecular Line Studies of Ballistic Stellar Interlopers Burrowing through Dense Interstellar Clouds does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Molecular Line Studies of Ballistic Stellar Interlopers Burrowing through Dense Interstellar Clouds, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Molecular Line Studies of Ballistic Stellar Interlopers Burrowing through Dense Interstellar Clouds will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-966337