The formation of stars and planets is a messy, multilayered, and energetic process. As part of the Early Planet Formation in Embedded Disks observing program, Sacha Gavino (Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen) and collaborators used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to get a glimpse of this process. The images above show ALMA observations of two protostars, IRS1 and IRS2. In these images, green shows emission from fast-moving (<25 kilometers per second) carbon monoxide molecules, red shows emission from even faster-moving (>40 kilometers per second) carbon monoxide, and blue marks emission from silicon monoxide molecules. Each of these protostars is ringed by a dusty circumstellar disk, but what dominates the view are wide-angle outflows and narrow jets. Gavino’s team showed that the two protostars’ jets have different structures, with IRS1’s jet tracing out a complex double helix and IRS2’s jet emerging from the system in clumps. The helical structure of IRS1’s jet provides evidence for the rotation of outflowing material — a process that carries away angular momentum from the system. The clumps in IRS2’s jet, on the other hand, give insight into past periods of accretion onto the protostar. For more information about these two protostars, including details on their potentially planet-forming disks, be sure to check out the full research article linked below.
Citation
“Early Planet Formation in Embedded Disks. XI. A High-Resolution View Toward the BHR 71 Class 0 Protostellar Wide Binary,” Sacha Gavino et al 2024 ApJ 974 21. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ad655e