Protostellar jets irradiated by massive stars

Abstract

The formation of solar-type stars is a gradual process during which they accrete mass from the dense disks and cloud cores that surround them. This accretion requires the release of angular momentum, and an important mechanism for achieving this seems to be the production of jets along the polar axes of the young stars1,2. But the presence of massive, luminous stars within the same star-forming region can affect the forming stars by stripping away their circumstellar envelopes with ultraviolet radiation, thereby removing the reservoir of gas from which the stars are built up and exposing the disks to photoerosion3. Here we present observations of four highly collimated jets from young stars that appear to have been stripped of their circumstellar molecular cloud cores in this way. The production of jets seemstohave been largely unaffected. If these jets are also photoionized, their mass loss rates can be determined from observations with much greater accuracy than for normal shock-excited jets.