English

SOFIA FEEDBACK Survey: The Eagle Nebula in [C II] and Molecular Lines

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-11-07 v1

Abstract

We characterize the physical conditions and energy budget of the M16 H II region using SOFIA FEEDBACK observations of the [C II] 158 μ\mum line. The O stars in the 104 M\sim 10^{4}~{\rm M}_{\odot} NGC 6611 cluster powering this H II region have blown at least 2 cavities into the giant molecular cloud: the large M16 cavity and the small N19 bubble. We detect the spectroscopic signature of an expanding photodissociation region shell towards N19, and traces of a thin, fragmented expanding shell towards M16. Our [C II] observations are resolved to 0.5 km s1^{-1} and 15.5^{\prime\prime} and analyzed alongside similarly resolved CO J=3-2 observations as well as archival data ranging from the radio to X-ray tracing a variety of gas phases spanning dense \sim10 K molecular gas, 10410^{4} K photoionized gas, and million-K collisionally ionized plasma. With this dataset, we evaluate the coupling of energetic feedback from NGC 6611 and the O9 V star within N19 to the surrounding gas. Winds from NGC 6611 have blown a 20 pc radius cavity constrained in size along the major axis of the natal giant molecular filament, and much of the mechanical wind energy (>>90%) has escaped through breaches in the 104 M\lesssim 10^{4}~{\rm M}_{\odot} shell. Reservoirs of dense gas remain within a few parsecs of the cluster. N19, younger than M16 by 106\gtrsim 10^6 yr, is driven by a combination of mechanical wind energy and thermal pressure from photoionized gas and has swept up 103 M\sim 10^{3}~{\rm M}_{\odot} into neutral atomic and molecular shells.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.03978,
  title  = {SOFIA FEEDBACK Survey: The Eagle Nebula in [C II] and Molecular Lines},
  author = {Ramsey L. Karim and Marc W. Pound and Alexander G. G. M. Tielens and Jelle S. Kaastra and Leisa K. Townsley and Patrick S. Broos and Maitraiyee Tiwari and Lars Bonne and Ümit Kavak and Mark G. Wolfire and Nicola Schneider and Robert Simon and Rolf Güsten and Jürgen Stutzki and Marc Mertens and Oliver Ricken and Friedrich Wyrowski and Lee G. Mundy},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.03978},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

43 pages, 24 figures. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:23:50.138Z