JWST Observations of Starbursts: Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Emission at the Base of the M82 Galactic Wind

Creators: Bolatto, Alberto D.; Levy, Rebecca C.; Tarantino, Elizabeth; Boyer, Martha L.; Fisher, Deanne B.; Cronin, Serena A.; Leroy, Adam K.; Klessen, Ralf S.; Smith, J. D.; Berg, Danielle A.; Böker, Torsten; Boogaard, Leindert A.; Ostriker, Eve C.; Thompson, Todd A.; Ott, Juergen; Lenkić, Laura; Lopez, Laura A.; Dale, Daniel A.; Veilleux, Sylvain; van der Werf, Paul P.; Glover, Simon C. O.; Sandstrom, Karin M.; Skillman, Evan D.; Chisholm, John; Villanueva, Vicente; Lai, Thomas S.-Y.; Lopez, Sebastian; Mills, Elisabeth A. C.; Emig, Kimberly L.; Armus, Lee¹; Mayya, Divakara; Meier, David S.; De Looze, Ilse; Herrera-Camus, Rodrigo; Walter, Fabian; Relaño, Mónica; Koziol, Hannah B.; Marvil, Joshua; Jiménez-Donaire, María J.; Martini, Paul

1. California Institute of Technology

Abstract

We present new observations of the central 1 kpc of the M82 starburst obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope near-infrared camera instrument at a resolution θ ∼ 005–01 (∼1–2 pc). The data comprises images in three mostly continuum filters (F140M, F250M, and F360M), and filters that contain [Fe ii] (F164N), H₂v = 1 → 0 (F212N), and the 3.3 μm polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) feature (F335M). We find prominent plumes of PAH emission extending outward from the central starburst region, together with a network of complex filamentary substructures and edge-brightened bubble-like features. The structure of the PAH emission closely resembles that of the ionized gas, as revealed in Paschen α and free–free radio emission. We discuss the origin of the structure, and suggest the PAHs are embedded in a combination of neutral, molecular, and photoionized gas.

Copyright and License

© 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

Acknowledgement

We acknowledge the comments from Bruce Draine, Brandon Hensley, and the anonymous referee, which helped improve this manuscript. This work is based on observations made with NASA/ESA/CSA JWST. The data were obtained from MAST at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with program JWST-GO-01701. Support for program JWST-GO-01701 is provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127. We gratefully acknowledge Alyssa Pagan at the Space Telescope Science Institute for her beautiful multicolor rendition of the data used in Figures 3 and 4. A.D.B. and S.A.C. acknowledge support from the NSF under award AST-2108140. R.C.L. acknowledges support for this work provided by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics postdoctoral fellowship under award AST-2102625. R.H.-C. thanks the Max Planck Society for its support under the Partner Group project "The Baryon Cycle in Galaxies" between the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the Universidad de Concepción. R.H-C. also gratefully acknowledges financial support from ANID BASAL project FB210003. R.S.K. and S.C.O.G. acknowledge funding from the European Research Council via the Synergy Grant "ECOGAL" (project ID 855130), from the German Excellence Strategy via the Heidelberg Cluster of Excellence (EXC 2181-390900948) "STRUCTURES," and from the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action in project "MAINN" (funding ID 50OO2206). V.V. acknowledges support from the scholarship ANID-FULBRIGHT BIO 2016-56160020, funding from NRAO Student Observing Support (SOS)—SOSPADA-015, and funding from the ALMA-ANID Postdoctoral Fellowship under the award ASTRO21-0062. I.D.L. acknowledges funding support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program DustOrigin (ERC-2019-StG-851622) and funding support from the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) through the PRODEX project "JWST/MIRI Science exploitation" (C4000142239). L.L. acknowledges that a portion of their research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). The work of E.C.O. was supported in part by grant 510940 from the Simons Foundation.

Facilities

JWST - James Webb Space Telescope, VLA - Very Large Array, HST - Hubble Space Telescope satellite, IRAM:NOEMA - , IRAM:30m - Institute de Radioastronomie Millimetrique 30 meter telescope

Software References

JWST Calibration Pipeline (Bushouse et al. 2023), JHAT (Rest et al. 2023), Matlab

Data Availability

Automatic pipeline processed MAST mosaics can be found at doi:10.17909/cwtn-nh63.

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