Astronomers using the W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawai'i Island have captured the most detailed and complete images ever taken of the zone where the constellation of Orion gets zapped with UV radiation from massive young stars.
The photo-dissociation region is located in the middle of the "sword" hanging from the "belt" and is an active star-forming site. When viewed with the naked eye, the nebula is often mistaken for one of the stars in the constellation, and when viewed with a telescope, it is a glowing gaseous stellar nursery 1,350 light years away.
It was exciting to be the first to see the best images of the Orion Bar ever taken by a space telescope.
It's an ideal place to look for clues as to how stars and planets are created because it's the closest massive star formation region to us.
The lead author of a paper on this study said that looking into our past is similar to serving photo-dissociation regions. The regions allow us to understand how young stars affect the gas and dust cloud they are born in.
The study can be found in a preprint format on arXiv.org.
The planning of the ERS program has been aided by the observations of the pathfinders. The publication of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific paper describes the program.
There is a methodology.
The second generation Near-Infrared Camera (NIRC2), which was used by the team, was combined with the adaptive optics system of the telescope. The researchers were able to distinguish the different substructures in the area, such as ridges and proplyds.
"For the first time, we have been able to observe at a small scale how interstellar matter structures depend on their environments, particularly how planetary systems could form in environments strongly irradiated by massive stars," said Habart. We might be able to better understand the heritage of the interstellar medium in planetary systems.
Massive young stars emit large amounts of UV radiation that affect the physics and chemistry of their local environment, and how this surge of energy the stars inject into their native cloud impacts and shapes star formation is not yet known.
Astronomers will be able to better understand the process because of the new images of the Orion Bar. The fuel for star formation is the dense, cold molecule gas.
What are we going to do next?
The new observations from the Keck Observatory have led to plans to observe the Orion Bar in the coming weeks.
One of the most exciting aspects of this work is the fact that Keck is a fundamental part of the JWST era. We will be able to dive deeper into the Orion Bar and other PDRs with the help of Keck. The two telescopes can provide unique insight into the characteristics of the gas and chemical composition of the stars, which will help us understand the nature of these fascinating star-blasted regions.
More information: High angular resolution near-IR view of the Orion Bar revealed by Keck/NIRC2, arXiv:2206.08245v1 [astro-ph.GA] arxiv.org/pdf/2206.08245.pdf Journal information: Astronomy & Astrophysics
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