Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: Most stars form as members of large associations within dense, very cold (10 to 100 kelvin) 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 to 2.1 million kelvin pervades the southwest extension of the nebula. The plasma flows into the adjacent interstellar medium. This x-ray outflow phenomenon must be widespread throughout our Galaxy.
Source: Science
Institutions: Leiden University, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Joseph Fourier, Paul Scherrer Institute, ETH Zurich, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble, Leiden Observatory, University of Geneva, California Institute of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2063027481