A compact CO bipolar outflow from NGC 2024 FIR6

The discovery is reported of a bipolar outflow source in the NGC 2024 cloud core, which appears to be associated with both the 1300-μm continuum source FIR6, and a water maser. This flow is compact (size ∼ 0.05 pc), displays bright, wide line-wings (total width ∼ 125 km s-1 and has a mechanical luminosity LCO ∼ 15 times the solar luminosity. These properties suggest that FIR6 is a young stellar object of high mass: from the correlation of mechanical luminosity with bolometric luminosity, the source luminosity is > ∼ 103.5 times the solar luminosity. The short dynamical timescale of this flow suggests that the system is very young, but the high inferred luminosity implies that the object has evolved beyond the stage of isothermal protostellar contraction. (author)