English

A Highly Collimated Jet from the Red Square Nebula, MWC 922

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2019-02-06 v1 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

Deep, narrow-band \Ha\ and 6584 \AA\ [\Nii ] CCD images of the peculiar, infrared excess B[e] star MWC~922 reveal a collimated, bipolar jet orthogonal to the previously detected extended nebula. The jet consists of a pair of \sim0.15 pc segments on either side of MWC~922 separated by gaps. The most distant jet segments disappear \sim0.6 pc from the star. The northwest beam points to a faint emission-line feature 1.65 pc from MWC~922 that may be a terminal bow shock where the jet rams the ambient medium. The narrow opening-angle of the jet combined with an estimated internal sound speed of \sim10 \kms\ implies a jet speed \sim500 \kms . The previously detected nebula extends up to 0.6~pc to the southwest of MWC~922 at right angles to the jet and appears to be an extension of the compact, edge-on disk surrounding the star. It points toward the HII region Messier 16 located \sim1\degr\ (\sim30 pc in projection) to the southwest. This nebula and jet appear to be externally ionized by the ambient Lyman continuum radiation field and have electron densities of ne_e \sim 50 to 100 cm3^{-3}. The southwest nebula and jet have similar surface brightness in \Ha\ and [\Nii ]. Faint 70 μ\mum emission traces the southwest ejecta that likely originates from \sim50 K dust embedded in the photo-ionized plasma which may shadow the dimmer ejecta northeast of MWC~922. MWC~922 may be a massive member of the Serpens OB1 or OB2 associations surrounding Messier 16 and Sh2-54.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1901.08592,
  title  = {A Highly Collimated Jet from the Red Square Nebula, MWC 922},
  author = {John Bally and Zen H. Chia},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.08592},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

12 pages, 7 figures, MNRAS, in press

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:21:35.023Z