Letter to the Editor

Orion A’s complete 3D magnetic field morphology

¹ Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre, National Research Council Canada, PO Box 248, Penticton, BC V2A 6J9, Canada
e-mail: mehrnoosh.tahani@nrc.ca
² Physics & Astronomy, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
³ Physics & Astronomy, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
⁴ Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3H4, Canada
⁵ Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8602, Japan
⁶ Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, 776 Daedeok-daero, 34055 Daejeon, Republic of Korea
⁷ Université Paris Cité and Université Paris Saclay, CEA, CNRS, AIM, 91190 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
⁸ Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre, National Research Council Canada, 5071 West Saanich Road, Victoria, BC V9E 2E7, Canada
⁹ Department of Earth Science and Astronomy, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan
¹⁰ Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, PO Box 9010 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Received: 13 February 2022
Accepted: 21 March 2022

Abstract

Magnetic fields permeate the interstellar medium and are important in the star formation process. Determining the three-dimensional (3D) magnetic fields of molecular clouds will allow us to better understand their role in the evolution of these clouds and the formation of stars. We fully reconstruct the approximate 3D magnetic field morphology of the Orion A molecular cloud (on scales of a few to ∼100 pc) using Galactic magnetic field models, as well as available line-of-sight and plane-of-sky magnetic field observations. While previous studies identified the 3D magnetic field morphology of the Orion A cloud as an arc shape, in this study we provide the orientation of this arc-shaped field and its plane-of-sky direction for the first time. We find that this 3D field is a tilted, semi-convex (from our point of view) structure and mostly points in the direction of decreasing latitude and longitude on the plane of the sky from our vantage point. The previously identified bubbles and events in this region were key in shaping this arc-shaped magnetic field morphology.