A jet of molecular hydrogen arising from a forming high-mass star

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Left: Near-infrared image of the M17 silhouette disk discovered in 2004. The field of view is 27quotx27quot which roughly corresponds to 60000 AU x 60000 AU (AU stands for astronomical units). Right: Zoom on the central region at six selected wavelen ...
Left: Near-infrared image of the M17 silhouette disk, discovered in 2004. The field of view is 27"x27", which roughly corresponds to 60000 AU x 60000 AU (AU stands for astronomical units). Right: Zoom on the central region at six selected wavelengths. The pictures were obtained with SINFONI. Each panel has a field of view of 4.8"x3.6" (i.e. 10560 AU x 7920 AU). While panels (b), (d), and (f) show the densest inner part of the silhouette disk, panels (c) and (e) reveal the H2 jet (individual emission knots are labelled with A, B, and C).
A team of European astronomers offer new evidence that high-mass stars could form in a similar way to low-mass stars, that is, from accretion of gas and dust through a disk surrounding the forming star. Their article, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, reports the discovery of a jet of molecular hydrogen arising from a forming high-mass star located in the Omega nebula (M17). This detection confirms the hypothesis based on their earlier discovery that this forming high-mass star is surrounded by a large accretion disk.


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