Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-12T23:17:53.174Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Westbrook's Molecular Gun: Discovery of Near-Infrared Microstructures and Molecular Bullets in AFGL 618

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2016

Toshiya Ueta
Affiliation:
Department of Astronomy, MC-221, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA ueta@astro.uiuc.edu, d-fong@astro.uiuc.edu, meixner@astro.uiuc.edu
David Fong
Affiliation:
Department of Astronomy, MC-221, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA ueta@astro.uiuc.edu, d-fong@astro.uiuc.edu, meixner@astro.uiuc.edu
Margaret Meixner
Affiliation:
Department of Astronomy, MC-221, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA ueta@astro.uiuc.edu, d-fong@astro.uiuc.edu, meixner@astro.uiuc.edu

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

We present high-sensitivity near-IR images of a carbon-rich proto-planetary nebula, AFGL 618, obtained with the Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (IRCS) mounted on the 8.2m Subaru Telescope. The deep near-IR images have revealed “bullets” and “horns” extending farther out from the edges of the previously known bipolar nebulosities that consist of dust-scattered star light component and shock-excited line emission component. That these bullets and horns represent the positions from which [Fe II] IR lines arise is strongly suggested from the spatial coincidence between these near-IR microstructures and the optical collimated outflow structure observed by the recent HST/WFPC2 imaging, together with the previous detection of shock-excited, forbidden IR lines of atomic species at those locations. At these positions of the near-IR mincrostructures, we have also discovered CO clumps moving at > 200 km s-1 from our re-analysis of the existing 12CO J = 1 – 0 data obtained with the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association (BIMA) interferometer array. These findings indicate that fast-moving CO clumps seem to be impinging upon the surrounding ambient circumstellar shell, thereby causing shocked emission regions which manifest themselves as the near-IR microstructures at the shock interface. To deepen our understanding of the connection between the near-IR microstructures and the CO outflow structure, we are currently conducting higher resolution observation in CO lines with the BIMA array.

Type
Part III: Planetary Nebulae in the Scheme of Stellar Evolution
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2003