Effects of an Embedded B-Star Wind on the Properties of a Molecular Cloud: Ophiuchus
Abstract
Supernovae are often considered to be one of the main drivers of turbulence in molecular clouds. But, recent studies (Arce et al. 2010; Arce et al. 2011) find that stellar feedback from not-especially-massive B-type stars, which are much more long-lived and numerous than stars which go supernova, can account for at least half of the turbulent energy in one large nearby molecular cloud, Perseus. In the Ophiuchus cloud, we find dust emission and H-alpha mapping showing a prominent HII region surrounded by a shell of denser, warmer gas. The center of the shell coincides with rho Ophiuchii, a multiple-star system with four B-type stars forming two pairs of close binaries. In this work, we seek answers to two questions: 1) whether the energy embedded in the shell structure plausibly comes from the B-star cluste, and if so, 2) how this energy compares to the total turbulent energy in the Ophiuchus cloud.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #223
- Pub Date:
- January 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014AAS...22333101C