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Published January 2023 | Published
Journal Article Open

Time-variable Jet Ejections from RW Aur A, RY Tau, and DG Tau*

  • 1. ROR icon Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica
  • 2. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 3. ROR icon Universität Hamburg
  • 4. ROR icon Space Telescope Science Institute
  • 5. ROR icon National Autonomous University of Mexico
  • 6. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 7. ROR icon Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
  • 8. ROR icon Mount Stromlo Observatory
  • 9. Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, Russian Academy of Sciences, 298409 Nauchny, Crimea, †
  • 10. ROR icon University College Dublin
  • 11. ROR icon Dublin Institute For Advanced Studies
  • 12. ROR icon National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
  • 13. ROR icon Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope
  • 14. ROR icon National Central University
  • 15. ROR icon University of Hawaii at Hilo
  • 16. ROR icon Kyoto University

Abstract

We present Gemini-NIFS, Very Large Telescope-SINFONI, and Keck-OSIRIS observations of near-IR [Fe ii] emission that are associated with well-studied jets from three active T Tauri stars—RW Aur A, RY Tau, and DG Tau—taken from 2012 to 2021. We primarily cover the redshifted jet from RW Aur A and the blueshifted jets from RY Tau and DG Tau, in order to investigate long-term time variabilities that are potentially related to the activities of mass accretion and/or the stellar magnetic fields. All of these jets consist of several moving knots, with tangential velocities of 70–240 km s−1, which were ejected from the star with different velocities and at irregular time intervals. Via comparisons with the literature, we identify significant differences in the tangential velocities between 1985–2008 and 2008–2021 for the DG Tau jet. The sizes of the individual knots appear to increase with time, and, in turn, their peak brightnesses in the 1.644 μm emission decreased by up to a factor of ∼30 during the epochs of our observations. The variety of decay timescales measured in the [Fe ii] 1.644 μm emission could be attributed to different preshock conditions should the moving knots be unresolved shocks. However, our data do not exclude the possibility that these knots are due to nonuniform density/temperature distributions with another heating mechanism, or, in some cases, due to stationary shocks without proper motions. Spatially resolved observations of these knots with significantly higher angular resolutions will be necessary to better understand their physical nature.

Copyright and License

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 thank Dr. Elena Valenti for reducing the SINFONI data with the ESO pipeline and we thank Dr. Lowell Tacconi-Garman for solving the calibration issues with the data sets. We thank the Gemini Observatory staff for their assistance in preparing our programs for data acquisition, and we thank the staff observers for executing our program observations during the assigned queue time. M.T. is supported by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) of Taiwan (grant Nos. 106-2119-M-001-026-MY3, 109-2112-M-001-019, 110-2112-M-001-044 and 111-2112-M-001-059-). R.G.M. acknowledges support from UNAM-PAPIIT project IN108822 and from CONACyT Ciencia de Frontera project ID 86372. T.P.R. acknowledges support from the European Research Council, through grant No. 743029 (EASY). This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. This research has made use of the Simbad database operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France, and NASA's Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service.

Facilities

Gemini (NIFS) - , VLT (SINFONI) - , Keck (OSIRIS) - .

Software References

IRAF (Tody 19861993), PyRAF (Science Software Branch at STScI 2012), numpy (Oliphant 2006), scipy (Virtanen et al. 2020), astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013), Gemini IRAF package (Turner et al. 2006), ESO Refrex (Freudling et al. 2013), OSIRIS pipeline (Lyke et al. 2017; Lockhart et al. 2019).

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Additional details

Created:
December 6, 2024
Modified:
December 6, 2024