On the Orion infrared nebula/molecular cloud.
Abstract
The existence is reported of a spike and a plateau-like emission feature in the Orion nebula located in or near the Kleinmann-Low nebula and the Becklin-Neugebauer source. Values are presented for the antenna temperatures in the directions of the spike and the plateau, and it is concluded that the gas-phase chemical composition of the Orion molecular cloud is not homogeneous and that a change from the usual dominance by carbon-containing molecules to dominance by inorganic molecules is confined to a small region distinguished by large internal motions. Two papers estimating the magnetic field strengths of the Orion nebula/molecular cloud are reviewed. It is argued that the strengths of the magnetic fields are uncertain by several orders of magnitude and that the large motions in the region dominated by inorganic molecules are responsible for the broad millimeter-wavelength lines of SO observed in the molecular cloud, rather than the large magnetic fields as suggested in one of the previous papers.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- July 1975
- DOI:
- 10.1086/181843
- Bibcode:
- 1975ApJ...199L..35Z
- Keywords:
-
- Chemical Composition;
- Infrared Astronomy;
- Interstellar Gas;
- Interstellar Magnetic Fields;
- Molecular Spectra;
- Nebulae;
- Galactic Nuclei;
- Infrared Spectra;
- Magnetic Flux;
- Radiation Sources;
- Stellar Evolution;
- Astrophysics