A&A 402, L73-L76 (2003)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20030343
R. Liseau1 - B. Larsson1 - A. Brandeker1 - P. Bergman2 - P. Bernath3 - J. H. Black2 - R. Booth2 - V. Buat4 - C. Curry3 - P. Encrenaz5 - E. Falgarone6 - P. Feldman7 - M. Fich3 - H. Florén1 - U. Frisk8 - M. Gerin6 - E. Gregersen9 - J. Harju10 - T. Hasegawa11 - Å. Hjalmarson2 - L. Johansson2 - S. Kwok11 - A. Lecacheux12 - T. Liljeström13 - K. Mattila10 - G. Mitchell14 - L. Nordh15 - M. Olberg2 - G. Olofsson1 - L. Pagani5 - R. Plume11 - I. Ristorcelli16 - Aa. Sandqvist1 - F. v. Schéele8 - G. Serra16 - N. Tothill14 - K. Volk11 - C. Wilson9
1 - Stockholm Observatory, SCFAB, Roslagstullsbacken 21, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
2 -
Onsala Space Observatory, 439 92 Onsala, Sweden
3 -
Department of Physics, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada
4 -
Laboratoire d'Astronomie Spatiale, BP 8, 13376 Marseille Cedex 12, France
5 -
LERMA & FRE 2460 du CNRS, Observatoire de Paris, 61 Av. de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France
6 -
LERMA & FRE 2460 du CNRS, École Normale Supérieure, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France
7 -
Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, 5071 West Saanich Road, Victoria, BC V9E 2E7, Canada
8 -
Swedish Space Corporation, PO Box 4207, 171 04 Solna, Sweden
9 -
Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4M1, Canada
10 -
Observatory, PO Box 14, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland
11 -
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary, Calgary, ABT 2N 1N4, Canada
12 -
LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Section de Meudon, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92195 Meudon Cedex, France
13 -
Metsähovi Radio Observatory, Helsinki University of Technology, Otakaari 5A, 02150 Espoo, Finland
14 -
Department of Astronomy and Physics, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, NS B3H 3C3, Canada
15 -
Swedish National Space Board, Box 4006, 171 04 Solna, Sweden
16 -
CESR, 9 avenue du Colonel Roche, BP 4346, 31029 Toulouse, France
Received 29 November 2002 / Accepted 1 February 2003
Abstract
Odin has successfully observed the molecular core Oph A in the 572.5 GHz rotational ground state line of
ammonia, NH3 (
). The interpretation of this result makes use of complementary
molecular line data obtained from the ground (C17O and CH3OH) as part of the Odin preparatory work.
Comparison of these observations with theoretical model calculations of line excitation and transfer
yields a quite ordinary abundance of methanol,
X(
.
Unless NH3 is not entirely segregated from C17O and CH3OH, ammonia is found to be significantly underabundant with respect to typical dense core values,
viz. X(
.
Key words: ISM: individual objects:
- clouds - molecules -
stars: formation
The ammonia molecule (NH3) has a complex energy level structure, which makes it a useful tool to
probe regions of very different excitation conditions in a given source (see Ho & Townes 1983, who also provide
an energy level diagram), and molecular clouds have routinely been observed from the ground in the inversion lines
at about 1.3 cm, with critical densities of about 103 cm-3. On the other hand,
the rotational lines have much shorter lifetimes (minutes compared to months) and consequently much higher
critical densities (>107 cm-3, see Table 2). Their wavelengths fall, however,
into the submillimeter and far infrared regime and these lines are generally not accessible from the ground.
Using the Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO), the submillimeter ground state line of ammonia of wavelength 524 m,
NH3 (
), was first and solely detected 20 years ago toward Orion OMC1
by Keene et al. (1983). Only recently have renewed attempts been made to observe this line
with the spaceborne submillimeter telescope Odin (Frisk et al., Hjalmarson et al., Larsson et al., Nordh et al. and
Olberg et al., this issue).
The cold and dense molecular core
is part of the
iuchi cloud at the distance of 160 pc
(Loren et al. 1990), which is a region of ongoing low mass star formation.
In this Letter, we present Odin observations of
in the NH3 572.5 GHz rotational ground state
transition. Compared to the KAO, the highly improved sensitivity of Odin permits the clear detection of
this tenfold weaker line. These Odin observations were complemented with C17O and CH3OH data
obtained with the Swedish ESO Submillimeter Telescope (SEST) in La Silla, Chile (see Table 1),
aimed at the determination of the average physical conditions
of the
core and these are discussed in Sect. 4.1. The Odin observations and their results are presented
in Sects. 2 and 3. The implications are discussed, together with our conclusions, in Sect. 4.2.
Shortly after launch, it was recognised that the 572 GHz Schottky receiver was not properly phase-locked.
However, Odin "sees'' the Earth's atmosphere during its revolution and
a relatively weak telluric ozone line, O3 (
)
572 877.1486 MHz
(Pickett et al. 1998), falls sufficiently close to the ammonia line,
NH3 (
)
572 498.0678 MHz, to allow monitoring of the receiver frequency. For large
portions of the
observations, the O3 line center frequency was within 0.3 of a spectrometer channel
(AOS-channel width = 0.32 km s-1)
and we used these fiducial channels to restore the remaining data in frequency space (cf. Fig. 1).
Data collected during revolution 5336 to 5339 were not used because of too-low mixer current.
The reduction procedure is described by Larsson et al. (this issue).
The
K line (
;
Hjalmarson et al., this issue) of NH3 (10 - 00) toward
is centered on
km s-1. The width of the hyperfine components (Townes & Schawlow 1955) in Fig. 2
is 1.5 km s-1 and some line broadening results from velocity smearing.
In order to discuss the implications of this Odin observation we will first derive the physical characteristics of the source from
ground based observations, specifically obtained for the Odin mission.
The technical details of these SEST observations will be presented elsewhere.
Observationa | CH3OH model | |||||||||
Rotational | Frequencyb |
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106
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|
transition | (MHz) | (K) | (s-1) | (km s-1) | (km s-1) | (K) | (K) | (K) | ||
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96739.39 | 12 | 2.48 |
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1.16 | -0.07 | -11.6 | ||
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96741.42 | 7 | 2.38 |
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1.14 | 0.09 | 16.3 | ||
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96744.58![]() |
20 | 3.30 |
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0.21 | 0.05 | 7.8 | |
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96755.51 | 28 | 2.48 |
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0.04 | 0.005 | 11.6 | ||
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143865.79 | 28 | 11.16 | ![]() |
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0.04 | 0.005 | 10.2 | |
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145093.75 | 27 | 11.93 |
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0.32 | 0.04 | 12.9 | ||
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145097.47![]() |
20 | 10.61 |
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1.72 | 0.12 | 18.4 | |
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145103.23 | 14 | 12.23 |
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2.28 | 0.21 | 15.9 | ||
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145124.41 | 52 | 6.50 | <0.06 | 0.002 | 0.0003 | 9.7 | |||
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145126.37 | 36 | 6.63 |
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0.071 | 0.009 | 11.6 | ||
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145126.37 | 40 | 6.63 | 0.007 | 0.0004 | 10.8 |
Notes: a Average of data for two positions, spaced by 30 ![]() b Rest frequencies were adopted from Lovas (1992). Tuning frequencies are identified with an asterisk. c Low resolution spectrum (1.4 MHz). This spectrum includes also DCO+ (2-1) at a level of ![]() |
The SEST observations of
in the C17O (1-0) line (46
beam,
)
revealed
spectra with partially resolved hyperfine components. Their relative intensities reflect the ratios
of their statistical weights (0.5, 1.0, 0.75), indicating that the levels are populated according to their
thermodynamic equilibrium values and that the emission is most likely optically thin. The lines are relatively
narrow,
km s-1, with the main line centered on
km s-1.
From these observations, the beam averaged column density of molecular hydrogen (in cm-2)
can be estimated from the standard solution of the "radio''-equation of radiative transfer, i.e.
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(1) |
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(2) |
The H2 column density is not very sensitive to the assumed temperature:
the function
varies within a factor of less than three (2.65)
for
in the range 5 K to 50 K. For the observed line intensity
K km s-1, the H2 column density
is then in the range
cm-2. On the arcminute scale, this translates to
an average volume density of the order of
cm-3.
These results are in accord with earlier molecular line observations (e.g. Loren et al. 1990).
The observed spectra of 11 CH3OH lines (Table 1; for an energy level diagram,
see Nagai et al. 1979) are suggestive of gas of relatively low
excitation (the
line with
K is not detected
and the
blend, having
K, is weak, if
detected at all). We use large velocity gradient models (LVG) of methanol to obtain estimates of the average
conditions in the core by requiring acceptable models to be consistent with the C17O observations.
We consider the rotational Jk energy levels for both A- and E-type methanol in their ground torsional states.
The level energies and frequencies were obtained from the JPL-catalogue (Pickett et al. 1998).
For the A-states we adopted the Einstein-A values from Pei et al. (1988), whereas we calculated
those of the E-states using the equations of Lees (1973), with appropriate Hönl-London factors
for the a- and b-type transitions (e.g. Zare 1986). Rate coefficients for collisions with He were
kindly provided by D. Flower (see: Pottage et al. 2001, 2002) and were scaled for collisions with H2
(
).
The observed line spectrum (Table 1) is consistent with a model having
K,
cm-2,
cm-3,
km s-1 pc-1 (1.4 km s-1 along 40
), and a methanol abundance of
X(CH3OH
.
The model yields thus a
ratio
,
which can be compared to the equilibrium ratio of 0.67 at 20 K.
Any beam effects of significance are not evidenced by the CH3OH data (35
and 52
beam sizes),
suggestive of emission regions not exceeding half an arcminute. Even the strongest methanol lines
have only modest optical depths (
)
and the excitation of these lines is only mildly subthermal,
giving confidence to our temperature determination. Much higher temperatures (say 50 K) are not consistent with
the methanol observations.
is also equal to the temperature of the cold
dust component evidenced by ISO-LWS observations (Liseau et al. 1999).
NH3 modela | ||||||
Transition |
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(K) | (K) | (K) | (s-1) | (cm-3) | ||
o-(10-00) | 0.40 | 0.41 | 4.6 | 6.5 |
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p- (11-11)c | >0.38 | 0.88 | 0.10 | 11.8 |
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p- (22-22)c | >0.18 | 0.23 | 0.012 | 21.7 |
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o-(33-33) | ![]() |
0.04 | -0.005 | -5.2 |
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Notes: a Ortho-to-para of unity is assumed ( ![]() b Values of the critical density, ![]() ![]() c Data estimated from Fig. 2 of Zeng et al. (1984) and scaled to the Odin beam size, i.e. multiplied by (43/120)2. |
The model of the previous sections represents the basis for our analysis of the Odin ammonia line observations, where we varied only the NH3 abundance. Using the equations of Poynter & Kakar (1975; 15 parameter exponential fit) we computed the level energies and Einstein-A values, with the dipole moment from Cohen & Poynter (1974). The collisionial rate coefficients were adopted from Danby et al. (1988).
The observation with Odin (Table 2) can be fit with an ortho-ammonia abundance
of, formally,
,
corresponding to a beam averaged column density
cm-2.
has been mapped in the (11-11) and (22-22)
inversion lines of NH3 with the 100 m Effelsberg
antenna (43
beam) by Zeng et al. (1984). Their Fig. 2 displays the spectra toward one position, and
the values scaled to the Odin beam size
are given in our Table 2, together with our model for an ortho-to-para ratio of unity.
According to Zeng et al. (1984), extended ammonia emission on the 90
scale is also observed.
Fortuitously perhaps, a 43
source (
45
SE)
is also consistent with the (22-22) and (33-33) observations by Wootten et al. (1994) with the VLA (6
beam). The
observed and model values are, respectively, 11.5 K and 11.8 K for (22-22) and 2.2 K and 2.0 K for
(33-33), which is slightly masing. No data are given for their (11-11) observations, the model value of which is 45.2 K.
However, Wootten et al. (1994) used their (11-11) measurement (in combination with 22-22) to estimate
.
Albeit referring to a much smaller angular scale, this is in
reasonable agreement with our ad hoc assumption of equal amounts of ortho- and para-NH3.
We thus estimate a total ammonia abundance of the order of
in the
core. This value is significantly lower than the
10-8 to 10-7generally quoted for molecular clouds (and cannot be explained by an erroneous ortho-to-para ratio) and
contrasts with our value of X(CH3OH), which appears entirely "normal'' (e.g., van Dishoeck et al. 1993).
Although the uniqueness of the present model may be debatable (e.g., gradients in velocity, temperature and density
are known to exist over the 2
Odin beam), these results are certainly significant.
Smaller velocity gradients, higher temperatures and/or densities would result in even lower X(NH3).
At the other extreme, "normal'' abundances would require the line to be thermalized (
), e.g.,
at the unrealistically low value of
K, unless the NH3 source is point-like. With this caveat in mind,
we conclude that the
core likely has a very low NH3 abundance.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the two referees (A. Wootten and one anonymous) for their efforts, which has led to an improvement of the manuscript. We are grateful to D. Flower for providing us with the collision rate constants for methanol.