Friday, 29th August at 2.00pm at the JAC
Carolyn McCoey
Univ. of Western Ontario/Univ. of Waterloo
"A precessing jet in the NGC2264G protostellar outflow?"
ABSTRACT:
We present infrared imaging of the NGC 2264 G protostellar outflow
region, obtained with the InfraRed Array Camera (IRAC) on-board the Spitzer
Space Telescope. A jet is clearly detected in all IRAC bands and extends over
the entire length of the red outflow lobe traced by JCMT CO(2-1) observations.
The jet appears to travel along the outflow cavity wall before making three
changes in direction. We explore possible mechanisms that could give rise to
the jet structure and morphology and conclude that the observations can be
largely, although not entirely, explained by a slowly precessing jet (period ~
8000 yr) that lies mostly in the plane of the sky. It appears that the
observed changes in the red-shifted jet direction may be sufficient to account
for a significant fraction of the broadening of the outflow lobe observed in
the CO emission. The broadening of molecular emission is an important hurdle
for jet-driven models of protostellar outflows to overcome, and the last part
of the talk addresses current (and future) work that is being done to assess
the extent to which the jet can actually influence the outflow.
Related publication:
Teixeira et al., 2008. MNRAS, 384, 71
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