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No high-mass protostars in the silhouette young stellar object M17-SO1

Nature volume 434, pages 995–998 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

The birth of very massive stars is not well understood1,2,3, in contrast to the formation process of low-mass stars like our Sun4,5. 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 groups6,7. 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 stars8 has therefore generated considerable interest. Here we show that this protostar has an intermediate mass of only 2.5 to 8 solar masses (M⊙), contrary to the earlier claim of 20M⊙ (ref. 8). The surrounding circumstellar envelope contains only 0.09M⊙ and a much more extended local molecular cloud has 4–9M⊙.

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Figure 1: Silhouette features of M17-SO1.
Figure 2: Emission features and illustration of M17-SO1.
Figure 3: 13CO 1–0 line images of M17-SO1.

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Acknowledgements

This Letter is based on data collected at the Subaru Telescope and the Nobeyama Radio Observatory, which are operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Astronomy, School of Science, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

    Shigeyuki Sako, Takuya Yamashita, Mitsuhiko Honda & Takashi Onaka

  2. Subaru Telescope, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, 650 North A'ohoku Place, Hilo, Hawaii, 96720-2700, USA

    Shigeyuki Sako, Takuya Yamashita, Mitsuhiko Honda, Takuya Fujiyoshi & Hiroshi Terada

  3. Institute of Astronomy, The University of Tokyo, 2-21-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo, 181-0015, Japan

    Shigeyuki Sako, Takashi Miyata & Takeshi Kamazaki

  4. Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Sagamihara, Kanagawa, 229-8510, Japan

    Hirokazu Kataza & Mitsuhiko Honda

  5. Institute of Astrophysics & Planetary Sciences, Ibaraki University, 2-1-1 Bunkyo, Mito, Ibaraki, 310-8512, Japan

    Yoshiko K. Okamoto

  6. Purple Mountain Observatory, National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, China

    Zhibo Jiang

  7. Centre for Frontier Science, Chiba University, Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba, 263-8522, Japan

    Tomoyuki Hanawa

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  1. Shigeyuki Sako
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shigeyuki Sako.

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The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.

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Sako, S., Yamashita, T., Kataza, H. et al. No high-mass protostars in the silhouette young stellar object M17-SO1. Nature 434, 995–998 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03471

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