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HST emission line images of the Orion HII region: proper motions and possible variability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2006

Leonel Gutiérrez
Affiliation:
Instituto de Astrofśica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain. email: jeb@iac.es Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ensenada, México. leonel@astrosen.unam.mx
Corrado Giammanco
Affiliation:
Physikalisches Institut der Universität Bern, Switzerland. corrado.giammanco@space.unibe.ch
John E. Beckman
Affiliation:
Instituto de Astrofśica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain. email: jeb@iac.es Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain.
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Using HST emission line images of the Orion Nebula, separated by 7 years in epoch, we have obtained evidence of localized temporal variability of both density and temperature during this period. Applying a digital filter to reduce high frequency noise, we used images in Hα and [OIII] to quantify separately the variability in these two parameters. We detected fractional temperature variations of order 0.4% on scales of 2′10−2 pc. The same images yielded proper motion information; using cross-correlation to optimize the accuracy of the differential measurements we produced velocity field maps across the nebula, with vectors ranging up to ~130kms−1 across the line of sight. It is notable that in zones of rapid proper motion we find by far the largest density variations, as would be expected. It is much easier to quantify the temperature variations, on the other hand, in zones with low or zero detectable proper motion (see the other figure here), though these temperature variations appear across the whole face of the nebula.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2007

References

Corrado, G., Beckman, J.E. & Gutiérrez, L. 2006, in preparationGoogle Scholar
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