Jet-driving protostars identified from infrared observations of the Carina Nebula complex

Jets are excellent signposts for very young embedded protostars, so the authors want to identify jet-driving protostars as a tracer of the currently forming generation of stars in the Carina Nebula. They used archive data to construct large Spitzer IRAC mosaics of the Carina Nebula and performed a s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin) 2012-04, Vol.540, p.1-1
Main Authors: Ohlendorf, H, Preibisch, T, Gaczkowski, B, Ratzka, T, Grellmann, R, McLeod, A F
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Jets are excellent signposts for very young embedded protostars, so the authors want to identify jet-driving protostars as a tracer of the currently forming generation of stars in the Carina Nebula. They used archive data to construct large Spitzer IRAC mosaics of the Carina Nebula and performed a spatially complete search for objects with excesses in the 4.5 mu m band, typical of shock-excited molecular hydrogen emission. They also identified the mid-infrared point sources that are the likely drivers of previously discovered Herbig-Haro jets and molecular hydrogen emission line objects. The radiative-transfer modelling suggests that the jet sources are protostars with masses between similar to 1 M ... and similar to 10 M... that are surrounded by circumstellar disks and embedded in circumstellar envelopes. The estimated protostar masses less than or equal to 10 M... suggest that the current star-formation activity in the Carina Nebula is restricted to low- and intermediate-mass stars. More optical than infrared jets can be observed, indicating that star formation predominantly takes place close to the surfaces of clouds. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)
ISSN:0004-6361
1432-0746