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Published December 2022 | public
Journal Article

Deep diving off the 'Cosmic Cliffs': previously hidden outflows in NGC 3324 revealed by JWST

Abstract

We present a detailed analysis of the protostellar outflow activity in the massive star-forming region NGC 3324, as revealed by new Early Release Observations (EROs) from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Emission from numerous outflows is revealed in narrow-band images of hydrogen Paschen α (Paα) and molecular hydrogen. In particular, we report the discovery of 24 previously unknown outflows based on their H₂ emission. We find three candidate driving sources for these H₂ flows in published catalogues of young stellar objects (YSOs), and we identify 15 infrared point sources in the new JWST images as potential driving protostars. We also identify several Herbig–Haro (HH) objects in Paα images from JWST; most are confirmed as jets based on their proper motions measured in a comparison with previous Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Hα images. This confirmed all previous HST-identified HH jets and candidate jets, and revealed seven new HH objects. The unprecedented capabilities of JWST allow the direct comparison of atomic and molecular outflow components at comparable angular resolution. Future observations will allow quantitative analysis of the excitation, mass-loss rates, and velocities of these new flows. As a relatively modest region of massive star formation (larger than Orion but smaller than starburst clusters), NGC 3324 offers a preview of what star formation studies with JWST may provide.

Additional Information

We would like to thank John Bally for a prompt and helpful referee report. We would also like to thank Dirk Froebrich and Bo Reipurth for quickly providing MHO and HH numbers for this paper and their thoughtful comments on the work. We would also like to thank Adam Ginsburg for thoughtful discussions. This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with program #2731. This research is based in part on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. These observations are associated with program 10475. The MHO catalogue is hosted by the University of Kent. This research has made use of the SIMBAD data base, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France and SAOImage DS9 (Joye & Mandel 2003). This work made use of Astropy:7 a community-developed core Python package and an ecosystem of tools and resources for Astronomy (Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018, 2022). This research made use of APLpy, an open-source plotting package for PYTHON (Robitaille & Bressert 2012). TJH is funded by a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 24, 2023