Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik Abteilung Astronomie Sand 1, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany
Hinweis: Einige Seiten auf astro.uni-tuebingen.de können veraltet sein und werden nicht mehr aktualisiert. Note: Some webpages at astro.uni-tuebingen.de may be outdated and will no longer be updated.

Preprint A/13

A molecular outflow driven by the brown dwarf binary FU Tau

J.-L. Monin (1), E. Whelan (2), B. Lefloch (1), C. Dougados (1), C. Alves de Oliveira (3)

(1) UJF-Grenoble/CNRS-INSU, Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG) UMR 5274, 38041 Grenoble, France e-mail: Jean-Louis.Monin@obs.ujf-grenoble.fr
(2) Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik, Kepler Center for Astro and Particle Physics, Sand 1, Eberhard Karls Universität, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
(3) European Space Astronomy Centre (ESA), PO Box 78, 28691 Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain

To be published in: A&A

Abstract. We report the detection of a molecular outflow driven by the brown dwarf binary FU Tau. Using the IRAM 30 m telescope we observed the ¹²CO(2-1) (CO) emission in the vicinity of FU Tau and detected a bipolar outflow by examining the wings of the CO(2-1) line as we moved away from the source position. An integrated map of the wing emission between 3 km s^-1 and 5 km s^-1 reveals a blue-shifted lobe at a position of ~20 arcsec from the FU Tau system and at a position angle of ~20°. The beam size of the observations is 11 arcsec hence it is not possible to distinguish between the two components of the FU Tau binary. However as optical forbidden emission, a strong tracer of the shocks caused by outflow activity, has been detected in the spectrum of FU Tau A we assume this component to be the driving source of the molecular outflow. We estimate the mass and mass outflow rate of the outflow at 4 x 10^-6 M_sun and 6 x 10^-10 M_sun/yr respectively. These results agree well with previous estimates for BD molecular outflows. FU Tau A is now the third BD found to be associated with molecular outflow activity and this discovery adds to the already extensive list of the interesting properties of FU Tau.
 
Key words: radio lines: ISM ; brown dwarfs ; stars: formation ; stars: pre-main sequence ; stars: winds, outflows

Astrophysics (astro-ph): 1301.4387

[Home Page] [Preprints 2013] [Quick Reference] [Feedback]

| Impressum Last modified 04 Mar 2013