A deep near-infrared survey toward the Aquila molecular cloud - I. Molecular hydrogen outflows

TL;DR

This study conducted a deep near-infrared survey of the Aquila molecular cloud, identifying new molecular hydrogen outflows and their associated young stellar objects, revealing their distribution, orientations, and limited impact on turbulence.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive catalog of molecular hydrogen outflows in Aquila and analyzes their properties and relationship with young stellar objects.

Findings

Identified 45 MHOs, 34 of which are new discoveries.

Found no correlation between outflow properties and YSO spectral indices.

Suggests outflows are weak and unlikely to drive turbulence in the cloud.

Abstract

We have performed an unbiased deep near-infrared survey toward the Aquila molecular cloud with a sky coverage of ~1 deg2. We identified 45 molecular hydrogen emission-line objects(MHOs), of which only 11 were previously known. Using the Spitzer archival data we also identified 802 young stellar objects (YSOs) in this region. Based on the morphology and the location of MHOs and YSO candidates, we associate 43 MHOs with 40 YSO candidates. The distribution of jet length shows an exponential decrease in the number of outflows with increasing length and the molecular hydrogen outflows seem to be oriented randomly. Moreover, there is no obvious correlation between jet lengths, jet opening angles, or jet H2 1-0 S(1) luminosities and spectral indices of the possible driving sources in this region. We also suggest that molecular hydrogen outflows in the Aquila molecular cloud are rather weak sources of turbulence, unlikely to generate the observed velocity dispersion in the region of survey.