Highly Collimated Jets and Wide-Angle Outflows in HH46/47: New Evidence from Spitzer IR Images

TL;DR

This paper uses enhanced-resolution Spitzer IR images to reveal detailed structures of jets and outflows in HH46/47, including cavity walls, narrow jets, and hot gas emissions, providing new insights into their morphology.

Contribution

It presents the first high-resolution infrared imaging of HH46/47 outflows, revealing detailed structures and new features not previously observed.

Findings

Detection of sharply-delineated cavity walls of the wide-angle outflow.

Identification of very narrow jet features at various distances from the star.

Observation of compact emissions at 24 microns tracing hot gas in bow shocks.

Abstract

We present new details of the structure and morphology of the jets and outflows in HH46/47 as seen in Spitzer infrared images from IRAC and MIPS, reprocessed using the ``HiRes'' deconvolution technique. HiRes improves the visualization of spatial morphology by enhancing resolution (to sub-arcsec levels in IRAC bands) and removing the contaminating side lobes from bright sources. In addition to sharper views of previously reported bow shocks, we have detected: (i) the sharply-delineated cavity walls of the wide-angle biconical outflow, seen in scattered light on both sides of the protostar, (ii) several very narrow jet features at distances 400 AU to 0.1 pc from the star, and, (iii) compact emissions at MIPS 24 micron coincident with the jet heads, tracing the hottest atomic/ionic gas in the bow shocks.