Published May 1, 2017 | Version v1
Journal article

ALMA Observations of Asymmetric Molecular Gas Emission from a Protoplanetary Disk in the Orion Nebula

  • 1. Department of Astronomy, Van Vleck Observatory, Wesleyan University, 96 Foss Hill Drive, Middletown, CT 06459 (United States)
  • 2. National Research Council Canada Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics, 5071 West Saanich Road, Victoria, BC, V9E 2E7 (Canada)
  • 3. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822 (United States)
  • 4. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
  • 5. CASA, University of Colorado, CB 389, Boulder, CO 80309 (United States)

Description

We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of molecular line emission from d216-0939, one of the largest and most massive protoplanetary disks in the Orion Nebula Cluster. We model the spectrally resolved HCO+ (4–3), CO (3–2), and HCN (4–3) lines observed at 0.″5 resolution to fit the temperature and density structure of the disk. We also weakly detect and spectrally resolve the CS (7–6) line but do not model it. The abundances we derive for CO and HCO+ are generally consistent with expected values from chemical modeling of protoplanetary disks, while the HCN abundance is higher than expected. We dynamically measure the mass of the central star to be 2.17 ± 0.07 M , which is inconsistent with the previously determined spectral type of K5. We also report the detection of a spatially unresolved high-velocity blueshifted excess emission feature with a measurable positional offset from the central star, consistent with a Keplerian orbit at 60 ± 20 au. Using the integrated flux of the feature in HCO+ (4–3), we estimate the total H2 gas mass of this feature to be at least 1.8 -- 8 M J u p i t e r , depending on the assumed temperature. The feature is due to a local temperature and/or density enhancement consistent with either a hydrodynamic vortex or the expected signature of the envelope of a forming protoplanet within the disk.

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/aa6c2c

Additional details

Identifiers

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online)
Journal Volume
153
Journal Issue
5
Journal Page Range
[17 p.]
ISSN
1538-3881