IRAS 16293-2422 molecular environment

DOI

Studying the physical and chemical processes leading to the formation of low-mass stars is crucial for understanding the origin of our Sun and the Solar System. In particular, analyzing the emission and absorption lines from molecules to derive their spatial distribution in the envelopes of young stellar objects is a fundamental tool to obtain information on the kinematics and chemistry at the very early stages of star formation. In this work we aim to examine in detail the spatial structures and molecular abundances of material surrounding the very well-known low- mass binary protostar IRAS 16293-2422 and the prestellar core 16293E, which are embedded in the Lynds 1689 N dark cloud. This analysis is performed to obtain information on the physical and chemical properties of these young objects and their interaction with the molecular outflows present across the region. We have used the LAsMA heterodyne array installed on the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) 12 meter submillimeter telescope to image a region of about 0.12x0.12pc^2^ around IRAS 16293-2422 and 16293E and to study their molecular environment covering 45.6GHz in a frequency range from 277GHz to 375GHz. We have also used the APEX FLASH+ receiver to observe and search for molecular lines in a frequency range between 476GHz to 493GHz. We have identified 144 transitions from 36 molecular species, including isotopologues. This is the first time that such a large number of species have been mapped at large scales simultaneously in this region. The maps reveal the envelope to have a complex morphology around the cloud cores and the emission peaks known as E1, E2, W1, W2, and HE2, including the outflow structure arising from IRAS 16293-2422. Using several transitions of para-H_2_CO, we have derived new lower limits for the kinetic temperatures toward IRAS 16293-2422 and the surrounding emission peaks. Based on these temperatures, new column densities for all detected species were derived around the cloud cores and all emission peaks using the radiative transfer codes CLASS-Weeds, CASSIS, and RADEX. We derived H_2_ volume densities in Lynds 1689 N based on ortho-H_2_CO transitions with different upper level energies, varying between 5x10^6^cm^-3^ and 63K at IRAS 16293-2422 to values on the order of 1x10^6^cm^-3^ and 35K at the other emission peaks. Our new observations further confirm the scenario of an outflow arising from IRAS 16293-2422 interacting with the prestellar core 16293E. This is inferred from the velocity and linewidth gradient shown by several deuterated species closer to the outflow-core interaction region in 16293E. We observe a large-scale velocity gradient across the molecular cloud which coincides with the rotation of the envelope around IRAS 16293-2422 reported previously in the literature. A comparison with JCMT SCUBA-2 450 micrometer dust continuum maps and our data suggests that emission peak W2 may be related to a colder dust source rather than a shocked region. The newly derived column densities and temperatures for different species, combined with the molecular spatial distribution in all sources, indicate clear chemical differences between the protostellar source, the prestellar core and the shocked positions as a result of the diverse physical conditions at different locations in this region.

Cone search capability for table J/A+A/673/A143/list (List of fits maps)

Associated data

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.36730143
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/673/A143
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/673/A143
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/A+A/673/A143
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/assocdata/?obs_collection=J/A+A/673/A143
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/673/A143
Provenance
Creator Kahle K.A.; Hernandez-Gomez A.; Wyrowski F.; Menten K.M.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2023
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Cosmology; Interdisciplinary Astronomy; Interstellar medium; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Stellar Astronomy