1. No high-mass protostars in the silhouette young stellar object M17-SO1.
- Author
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Sako, Shigeyuki, Yamashita, Takuya, Kataza, Hirokazu, Miyata, Takashi, Okamoto, Yoshiko K., Honda, Mitsuhiko, Fujiyoshi, Takuya, Terada, Hiroshi, Kamazaki, Takeshi, Jiang, Zhibo, Hanawa, Tomoyuki, and Onaka, Takashi
- Subjects
PROTOSTARS ,LOW mass stars ,CIRCUMSTELLAR matter ,INTERSTELLAR medium ,STAR formation ,MOLECULAR clouds - Abstract
The birth of very massive stars is not well understood, in contrast to the formation process of low-mass stars like our Sun. It is not even clear that massive stars can form as single entities; rather, they might form through the mergers of smaller ones born in tight groups. The recent claim of the discovery of a massive protostar in M17 (a nearby giant ionized region) forming through the same mechanism as low-mass stars has therefore generated considerable interest. Here we show that this protostar has an intermediate mass of only 2.5 to 8 solar masses (M
\cirċ ), contrary to the earlier claim of 20M\cirċ (ref. 8). The surrounding circumstellar envelope contains only 0.09M\cirċ and a much more extended local molecular cloud has 4-9M\cirċ . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]- Published
- 2005
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