Bibcode
Mesa-Delgado, A.; Núñez-Díaz, M.; Esteban, C.; García-Rojas, J.; Flores-Fajardo, N.; López-Martín, L.; Tsamis, Y. G.; Henney, W. J.
Referencia bibliográfica
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 426, Issue 1, pp. 614-634.
Fecha de publicación:
10
2012
Número de citas
27
Número de citas referidas
22
Descripción
We present results from integral field spectroscopy of a field located
near the Trapezium Cluster using the Potsdam Multi-Aperture
Spectrophotometer (PMAS). The observed field contains a variety of
morphological structures: five externally ionized protoplanetary discs
(also known as proplyds), the high-velocity jet HH 514 and a bowshock.
Spatial distribution maps are obtained for different emission line
fluxes, the c(Hβ) extinction coefficient, electron densities and
temperatures, ionic abundances of different ions from collisionally
excited lines (CELs), C2 + and O2 + abundances
from recombination lines (RLs) and the abundance discrepancy factor of
O2 +, ADF(O2 +). We distinguish the three most
prominent proplyds (177-341, 170-337 and 170-334) and analyse their
impact on the spatial distributions of the above mentioned quantities.
We find that collisional de-excitation has a major influence on the line
fluxes in the proplyds. If this is not properly accounted for then
physical conditions deduced from commonly used line ratios will be in
error, leading to unreliable chemical abundances for these objects. We
obtain the intrinsic emission of the proplyds 177-341, 170-337 and
170-334 by a direct subtraction of the background emission, though the
last two present some background contamination due to their small sizes.
A detailed analysis of 177-341 spectra making use of suitable density
diagnostics reveals the presence of high-density gas (3.8 ×
105 cm-3) in contrast to the typical values
observed in the background gas of the nebula (3800 cm-3). We
also explore how the background subtraction could be affected by the
possible opacity of the proplyd and its effect on the derivation of
physical conditions and chemical abundances of the proplyd 177-341. We
construct a physical model for the proplyd 177-341 finding a good
agreement between the predicted and observed line ratios. Finally, we
find that the use of reliable physical conditions returns an ADF(O2
+) about zero for the intrinsic spectra of 177-341, while the
background emission presents the typical ADF(O2 +) observed
in the Orion nebula (0.16 ± 0.11 dex). We conclude that the
presence of high-density ionized gas is severely affecting the
abundances determined from CELs and, therefore, those from RLs should be
considered as a better approximation to the true abundances. Based on
observations collected at the Centro Astronómico Hispano
Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto, operated jointly by the Max-Planck
Institut für Astronomie and the Instituto de Astrofísica de
Andalucía (CSIC).
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