Million-Degree Plasma Pervading the Extended Orion Nebula
Abstract
Most stars form as members of large associations within dense, very cold (10-100 K) molecular clouds. The nearby giant molecular cloud in Orion hosts several thousand stars of ages less than a few million years, many of which are located in or around the famous Orion Nebula, a prominent gas structure illuminated and ionized by a small group of massive stars (the Trapezium). We present X-ray observations obtained with the X-ray Multi-Mirror satellite XMM-Newton revealing that a hot plasma with a temperature of 1.7-2.1 million K pervades the southwest extension of the nebula. The plasma, originating in the strong stellar winds from the Trapezium, flows into the adjacent interstellar medium. This X-ray outflow phenomenon must be widespread throughout our Galaxy.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0712.0476,
title = {Million-Degree Plasma Pervading the Extended Orion Nebula},
author = {M. Guedel and K. R. Briggs and T. Montmerle and M. Audard and L. Rebull and S. L. Skinner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0712.0476},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
accepted by Science, 23 pg, 7 figs, incl. Supplementary Online Material; this version of the work has been posted by permission of the AAAS. The definitive version was published in Science Express on Nov. 29, 2007, at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1149926; see also http://www.astro.phys.ethz.ch/papers/guedel/papers.html for downloads