ALMA Differentiates Two Birth Cries from a Single Star

[bystander]

ALMA Differentiates Two Birth Cries from a Single Star
ALMA | NAOJ | NRAO | ESO | 2019 Feb 26

ALMA image of the protostar MMS5/OMC-3. The protostar is located at the center and the gas streams are ejected to the east and west (left and right). The slow outflow is shown in orange and the fast jet is shown in blue. It is obvious that the axes of the outflow and jet are misaligned. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Matsushita et al.

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Astronomers have unveiled the enigmatic origins of two different gas streams from a baby star. Using ALMA, they found that the slow outflow and the high speed jet from a protostar have misaligned axes and that the former started to be ejected earlier than the latter. The origins of these two flows have been a mystery, but these observations provide telltale signs that these two streams were launched from different parts of the disk around the protostar.

Stars in the Universe have a wide range of masses, ranging from hundreds of times the mass of the Sun to less than a tenth of that of the Sun. To understand the origin of this variety, astronomers study the formation process of the stars, that is the aggregation of cosmic gas and dust.

Baby stars collect the gas with their gravitational pull, however, some of the material is ejected by the protostars. This ejected material forms a stellar birth cry which provides clues to understand the process of mass accumulation. ...

A Very Compact Extremely High Velocity Flow toward MMS 5/OMC-3 Revealed with ALMA ~ Yuko Matsushita et al

• Astrophysical Journal 871(2):221 (2019 Feb 01) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aaf1b6
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1811.08060 > 20 Nov 2018