The pair of 10-meter reflectors at the W.M. Keck observatory are the world's largest telescopes.
I used infrared images from Keck I to study a visually spectacular stage of newly-forming stars. I'll talk more about it one ofthese days.
The images and full text will be observable here on a night when the seeing is satisfactory.
| By analysis of images collected from the Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRC) at the W.M. Keck 10-meter observatory in the spring of 1995, we are testing current theoretical shock models of young stellar jets with the highest sensitivity observations yet made of this stage of newly-forming stars. A fundamentally important stage in protostellar evolution is the bipolar ejection of large amounts of molecular gas from the young stellar object in the form of supersonic, highly-collimated, jets. This complex process of mass ejection may in large part determine where a star will ultimately fall on the main sequence. The physical acceleration mechanisms which drive these jets will give us insights into an important stage of stellar development. We analyzed data for a selected source collected in the 1.64 µm line of [FeII], the 2.17 µm Brg recombination line of hydrogen, and the 2.12 µm v=1-0 S(1) vibrational line of moleclear hydrogen (H2) in order to selectively probe the spatial distribution of each associated type of gas. These emission lines in the near-infrared provide a unique view of the morphology and the excitation conditions in the immediate environment of the central driving engine (i.e. protostar/disk system). This set of data is of fundamental importance as it represents one of the highest angular resolution studies of young stellar objects conducted to date. |