No Arabic abstract
The famous Rosette Nebula has an evacuated central cavity formed from the stellar winds ejected from the 2-6 million-year-old co-distant and co-moving central star cluster NGC 2244. However, with upper age estimates of less than 110,000 years, the central cavity is too young compared to NGC 2244 and existing models do not reproduce its properties. A new proper motion study herein using Gaia data reveals the ejection of the most massive star in the Rosette, HD46223, from NGC 2244 occurred 1.73 (+0.34,-0.25)Myr (1$sigma$ uncertainty) in the past. Assuming this ejection was at the birth of the most massive stars in NGC 2244, including the dominant centrally positioned HD46150, the age is set for the famous ionised region at more than ten times that derived for the cavity. Here, we are able to reproduce the structure of the Rosette Nebula, through simulation of mechanical stellar feedback from a 40M$_{odot}$ star in a thin sheet-like molecular cloud. We form the 135,000M$_{odot}$ cloud from thermally-unstable diffuse interstellar medium under the influence of a realistic background magnetic field with thermal/magnetic pressure equilibrium. Properties derived from a snapshot of the simulation at 1.5Myr, including cavity size, stellar age, magnetic field and resulting inclination to the line of sight, match those derived from observations. An elegant explanation is thus provided for the stark contrast in age estimates based on realistic diffuse ISM properties, molecular cloud formation and stellar wind feedback.
Stellar kinematics is a powerful tool for understanding the formation process of stellar associations. Here, we present a kinematic study of the young stellar population in the Rosette nebula using the recent Gaia data and high-resolution spectra. We first isolate member candidates using the published mid-infrared photometric data and the list of X-ray sources. A total of 403 stars with similar parallaxes and proper motions are finally selected as members. The spatial distribution of the members shows that this star-forming region is highly substructured. The young open cluster NGC 2244 in the center of the nebula has a pattern of radial expansion and rotation. We discuss its implication on the cluster formation, e.g., monolithic cold collapse or hierarchical assembly. On the other hand, we also investigate three groups located around the border of the H II bubble. The western group seems to be spatially correlated with the adjacent gas structure, but their kinematics is not associated with that of the gas. The southern group does not show any systematic motion relative to NGC 2244. These two groups might be spontaneously formed in filaments of a turbulent cloud. The eastern group is spatially and kinematically associated with the gas pillar receding away from NGC 2244. This group might be formed by feedback from massive stars in NGC 2244. Our results suggest that the stellar population in the Rosette Nebula may form through three different processes: the expansion of stellar clusters, hierarchical star formation in turbulent clouds, and feedback-driven star formation.
We have used the AMR hydrodynamic code, MG, to perform 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations with self-gravity of stellar feedback in a sheet-like molecular cloud formed through the action of the thermal instability. We simulate the interaction of the mechanical energy input from a 15 solar mass star and a 40 solar mass star into a 100 pc-diameter 17000 solar mass cloud with a corrugated sheet morphology that in projection appears filamentary. The stellar winds are introduced using appropriate Geneva stellar evolution models. In the 15 solar mass star case, the wind forms a narrow bipolar cavity with minimal effect on the parent cloud. In the 40 solar mass star case, the more powerful stellar wind creates a large cylindrical cavity through the centre of the cloud. After 12.5 Myrs and 4.97 Myrs respectively, the massive stars explode as supernovae (SNe). In the 15 solar mass star case, the SN material and energy is primarily deposited into the molecular cloud surroundings over ~10^5 years before the SN remnant escapes the cloud. In the 40 solar mass star case, a significant fraction of the SN material and energy rapidly escapes the molecular cloud along the wind cavity in a few tens of kiloyears. Both SN events compress the molecular cloud material around them to higher densities (so may trigger further star formation), and strengthen the magnetic field, typically by factors of 2-3 but up to a factor of 10. Our simulations are relevant to observations of bubbles in flattened ring-like molecular clouds and bipolar HII regions.
Planck has mapped the polarized dust emission over the whole sky, making it possible to trace the Galactic magnetic field structure that pervades the interstellar medium (ISM). We combine polarization data from Planck with rotation measure (RM) observations towards a massive star-forming region, the Rosette Nebula in the Monoceros molecular cloud, to study its magnetic field structure and the impact of an expanding HII region on the morphology of the field. We derive an analytical solution for the magnetic field, assumed to evolve from an initially uniform configuration following the expansion of ionized gas and the formation of a shell of swept-up ISM. From the RM data we estimate a mean value of the line-of-sight component of the magnetic field of about 3microG (towards the observer) in the Rosette Nebula, for a uniform electron density of about 12cm-3. The dust shell that surrounds the Rosette HII region is clearly observed in the Planck intensity map at 353 GHz, with a polarization signal significantly different from that of the local background when considered as a whole. The Planck observations constrain the plane-of-the-sky orientation of the magnetic field in the Rosettes parent molecular cloud to be mostly aligned with the large-scale field along the Galactic plane. The Planck data are compared with the analytical model, which predicts the mean polarization properties of a spherical and uniform dust shell for a given orientation of the field. This comparison leads to an upper limit of about 45degr on the angle between the line of sight and the magnetic field in the Rosette complex, for an assumed intrinsic dust polarization fraction of 4%. This field direction can reproduce the RM values detected in the ionized region if the magnetic field strength in the Monoceros molecular cloud is in the range 6.5--9microG.
We have used the AMR hydrodynamic code, MG, to perform 3D hydrodynamic simulations with self-gravity of stellar feedback in a spherical clumpy molecular cloud formed through the action of thermal instability. We simulate the interaction of the mechanical energy input from 15 Msun, 40 Msun, 60 Msun and 120 Msun stars into a 100 pc-diameter 16,500 Msun cloud with a roughly spherical morphology with randomly distributed high density condensations. The stellar winds are introduced using appropriate non-rotating Geneva stellar evolution models. In the 15 Msun star case, the wind has very little effect, spreading around a few neighbouring clumps before becoming overwhelmed by the cloud collapse. In contrast, in the 40 Msun, 60 Msun and 120 Msun star cases, the more powerful stellar winds create large cavities and carve channels through the cloud, breaking out into the surrounding tenuous medium during the wind phase and considerably altering the cloud structure. After 4.97 Myrs, 3.97 Myrs and 3.01 Myrs respectively, the massive stars explode as supernovae (SNe). The wind-sculpted surroundings considerably affect the evolution of these SN events as they both escape the cloud along wind-carved channels and sweep up remaining clumps of cloud/wind material. The `cloud as a coherent structure does not survive the SN from any of these stars, but only in the 120 Msun case is the cold molecular material completely destabilised and returned to the unstable thermal phase. In the 40 Msun and 60 Msun cases, coherent clumps of cold material are ejected from the cloud by the SN, potentially capable of further star formation.
We present new radio and optical images of the nearest radio galaxy Centaurus A and its host galaxy NGC 5128. We focus our investigation on the northern transition region, where energy is transported from the ~5 kpc (~5 arcmin) scales of the Northern Inner Lobe (NIL) to the ~30 kpc (~30 arcmin) scales of the Northern Middle Lobe (NML). Our Murchison Widefield Array observations at 154 MHz and our Parkes radio telescope observations at 2.3 GHz show diffuse radio emission connecting the NIL to the NML, in agreement with previous Australia Telescope Compact Array observations at 1.4 GHz. Comparison of these radio data with our widefield optical emission line images show the relationship between the NML radio emission and the ionised filaments that extend north from the NIL, and reveal a new ionised filament to the east, possibly associated with a galactic wind. Our deep optical images show clear evidence for a bipolar outflow from the central galaxy extending to intermediate scales, despite the non-detection of a southern radio counterpart to the NML. Thus, our observational overview of Centaurus A reveals a number of features proposed to be associated with AGN feedback mechanisms, often cited as likely to have significant effects in galaxy evolution models. As one of the closest galaxies to us, Centaurus A therefore provides a unique laboratory to examine feedback mechanisms in detail.