Research Note

Millimeter observations of the HH 222 region ^*

¹ Observatoire de Bordeaux, BP 79, 33270 Floirac, France e-mail: Alain.Castets@obs.u-bordeaux1.fr
² Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 640 North A'ohoku Place, Hilo, HI 96720, USA
³ Instituto de Astronomía, UNAM, Apdo Postal 72-3 (Xangari), 58089 Morelia, Michoacán, México

Received: 5 July 2004
Accepted: 13 September 2004

Abstract

The HH 222 streamers in Orion and their associated non-thermal radio jet form a unique object, whose nature remains enigmatic. We have carried out a set of detailed millimeter observations around the non-thermal radio source in several transitions of the CO,    and CS molecules. We find that the radio source is not associated with any molecular outflow nor located within a dense molecular core, and is therefore very unlikely to be a newborn star. The observations are in principle consistent with the radio source being a more evolved T Tauri star undergoing an energetic event, but it could also be an evolved object (an X-ray binary or a microquasar) accidentally passing through the large Orion cloud complex.