VLA 1623 West is a young protostellar disk, study suggests

Tomasz Nowakowski is a member of the physics.org community.

Astronomers from the Queen's University in Kingston, Canada have used the ALMA to observe a mysterious source. The results of the study suggest that it is a young disk.

Gas is delivered from the environment to newborn stars through accretion disks. In order to better describe the initial conditions, studies of these disks are important.

VLA 1623 is located in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex and is one of the youngest. VLA 1623Aa and VLA 1623Ab are linked to VLA 1623B as well as VLA 1623 West. It is thought that VLA 1623 West is composed of cloudlets of heated material at the edge of the outflow wall.

VLA 1623 West has been observed with deep ALMA 1.3 and 0.87 millimeter observations in order to better understand it's origin.

The researchers wrote in the paper that they used geometric models to fit sensitive ALMA observations at 0.87 and 1.3mm.

The models show that VLA 1623W is a thick disk. A high dust optical depth across the disk and possibly lower than edge-on Protoplanetary disks were found by the astronomer.

The results show that VLA 1623W is a young disk. The emission was constant and not peaked.

The models show the same positive residuals at the four corners of the disk.

The researchers said that VLA 1623W may be a young disk where the large dust grains have not had enough time to settle.

Further observations of VLA 1623W at millimeter wavelength are needed in order to confirm the disk flaring. If this is true, it will make VLA 1623W an interesting laboratory to study dust settling and dust grain properties in space.

More information: Arnaud Michel, Sarah I. Sadavoy, Patrick D. Sheehan, Leslie W. Looney, Erin G. Cox, A millimeter-multiwavelength continuum study of VLA 1623 West. arXiv:2209.06781v1 [astro-ph.EP], arxiv.org/abs/2209.06781

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