Issue |
A&A
Volume 638, June 2020
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | L4 | |
Number of page(s) | 12 | |
Section | Letters to the Editor | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202038185 | |
Published online | 15 June 2020 |
Letter to the Editor
Evidence for magnetic activity at starbirth: a powerful X-ray flare from the Class 0 protostar HOPS 383
1
Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, CNES, LAM, Marseille, France
e-mail: nicolas.grosso@lam.fr
2
CRESST II and X-ray Astrophysics Laboratory NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, USA
3
Department of Physics, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA
4
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Cambridge, MA, USA
5
Center for Imaging Science, School of Physics & Astronomy, and Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA
Received:
16
April
2020
Accepted:
2
May
2020
Context. Class 0 protostars represent the earliest evolutionary stage of solar-type stars, during which the majority of the system mass resides in an infalling envelope of gas and dust and is not yet in the central, nascent star. Although X-rays are a key signature of magnetic activity in more evolved protostars and young stars, whether such magnetic activity is present at the Class 0 stage is still debated.
Aims. We aim to detect a bona fide Class 0 protostar in X-rays.
Methods. We observed HOPS 383 in 2017 December in X-rays with the Chandra X-ray Observatory (∼84 ks) and in near-infrared imaging with the Southern Astrophysical Research telescope.
Results. HOPS 383 was detected in X-rays during a powerful flare. This hard (E > 2 keV) X-ray counterpart was spatially coincident with the northwest 4 cm component of HOPS 383, which would be the base of the radio thermal jet launched by HOPS 383. The flare duration was ∼3.3 h; at the peak, the X-ray luminosity reached ∼4 × 1031 erg s−1 in the 2−8 keV energy band, a level at least an order of magnitude larger than that of the undetected quiescent emission from HOPS 383. The X-ray flare spectrum is highly absorbed (NH ∼ 7 × 1023 cm−2), and it displays a 6.4 keV emission line with an equivalent width of ∼1.1 keV, arising from neutral or low-ionization iron.
Conclusions. The detection of a powerful X-ray flare from HOPS 383 constitutes direct proof that magnetic activity can be present at the earliest formative stages of solar-type stars.
Key words: stars: flare / stars: individual: HOPS 383 / stars: low-mass / stars: magnetic field / stars: protostars / X-rays: stars
© N. Grosso et al. 2020
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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