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S. Pravdo (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech), E. Feigelson, Y. Tsuboi, Y. Maeda, G. Garmire (Pennsylvania State University), B. Reipurth, J. Bally (University of Colorado, Boulder)
Herbig-Haro objects trace shock heated material in star-forming regions. Their optical emission is characterized by hydrogen Balmer lines, and O[I], S[II], [NII], and O[III] emission that indicate temperatures ranging from several thousand to over 100,000 K. In a few HH objects with high excitation spectra, radio free-free emission is also detected. Most HH objects appear to be driven by highly collimated bipolar jets powered by accreting protostars and many exhibit large proper motions with velocities of hundreds of km/s away from a nearby young star. Although the temperature of the post-shock plasma in high excitation HH objects is expected to reach values as high as T = 1 million degrees K, X-ray emission has, until now, not been seen from any HH object. Here, we report the detection of X-ray emission from the prototypical HH object HH 2 with the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: spravdo@jpl.nasa.gov