Waves on the surface of the Orion molecular cloud

Olivier Berné (), Núria Marcelino and José Cernicharo
Additional contact information
Olivier Berné: Centro de Astrobiología, CSIC/INTA, Carretera de Torrejón a Ajalvir, km 4, 28850 Torrejón de Ardoz, Spain
Núria Marcelino: Centro de Astrobiología, CSIC/INTA, Carretera de Torrejón a Ajalvir, km 4, 28850 Torrejón de Ardoz, Spain
José Cernicharo: Centro de Astrobiología, CSIC/INTA, Carretera de Torrejón a Ajalvir, km 4, 28850 Torrejón de Ardoz, Spain

Nature, 2010, vol. 466, issue 7309, 947-949

Abstract: Orion nebula making waves The molecular cloud in the Orion nebula, at about 414 parsecs from Earth, gives us our closest view of massive-star formation. It has been predicted from star-formation models that the gases heated and ionized in the process will generate wave-like structures as they are blown over pre-existing molecular gas. These waves have now been observed, in a new series of radio maps of the Orion nebula. The waves are thought to result from Kelvin–Helmholtz instability, a phenomenon seen at the interface between fluids with different densities and velocities, and further observations of such periodic structures should provide insight into the mechanisms of massive-star formation and its effects on the surrounding region of the molecular cloud.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09289 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:466:y:2010:i:7309:d:10.1038_nature09289

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature09289

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().