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A circumstellar disk associated with a massive protostellar object

Nature volume 437, pages 112–115 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

The formation process for stars with masses several times that of the Sun is still unclear. The two main theories are mergers of several low-mass young stellar objects1, which requires a high stellar density, or mass accretion from circumstellar disks in the same way as low-mass stars are formed2, accompanied by outflows during the process of gravitational infall. Although a number of disks have been discovered around low- and intermediate-mass young stellar objects3,4, the presence of disks around massive young stellar objects is still uncertain and the mass of the disk system detected around one such object5, M17, is disputed6. Here we report near-infrared imaging polarimetry that reveals an outflow/disk system around the Becklin–Neugebauer protostellar object, which has a mass of at least seven solar masses (M⊙). This strongly supports the theory that stars with masses of at least 7M⊙ form in the same way as lower mass stars.

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Figure 1: Polarimetric result of the observation.
Figure 2: Results of Monte Carlo simulations.
Figure 3: Polarization degrees as a function of the distance R from the central object in the H-band.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is based on data collected at Subaru Telescope, which is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. This work is supported by a Grant-in-Aid from MEXT, Japan, and NSFC of China. Author Contributions M.T., M.F., H.S. and M.I. collected the data. P.L. and M.F. did the modelling. M.T., J.H., P.L. and J.Y. contributed to the scientific discussion. Z.J. conducted data reduction and wrote the paper with help from all co-authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academic of Sciences, 210008, Nanjing, China

    Zhibo Jiang & Ji Yang

  2. National Astronomical Observatories of Japan, Osawa 2-21-1, Tokyo, Mitaka, 181-8588, Japan

    Motohide Tamura, Misato Fukagawa, Hiroshi Suto & Miki Ishii

  3. Department of Physics, Astronomy & Mathematics, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, AL10 9AB, Hatfield, UK

    Jim Hough & Phil Lucas

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  1. Zhibo Jiang
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Correspondence to Zhibo Jiang.

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Jiang, Z., Tamura, M., Fukagawa, M. et al. A circumstellar disk associated with a massive protostellar object. Nature 437, 112–115 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04012

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