High-velocity Molecular Outflow in CO J = 7-6 Emission from the Orion Hot Core

Abstract

Using the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory 10.4 m telescope, we performed sensitive mapping observations of ^(12)CO J = 7-6 emission at 807 GHz toward Orion IRc2. The image has an angular resolution of 10", which is the highest angular resolution data toward the Orion Hot Core published for this transition. In addition, thanks to the on-the-fly mapping technique, the fidelity of the new image is rather high, particularly in comparison with previous images. We have succeeded in mapping the northwest-southeast high-velocity molecular outflow, whose terminal velocity is shifted by ~70-85 km s^(–1) with respect to the systemic velocity of the cloud. This yields an extremely short dynamical time scale of ~900 years. The estimated outflow mass loss rate shows an extraordinarily high value, on the order of 10^(–3) M_⊙ yr^(–1). Assuming that the outflow is driven by Orion IRc2, our result agrees with the picture so far obtained for a 20 M_⊙ (proto)star in the process of formation.

Files

Additional details