The Herschel Orion Protostar Survey: Far-Infrared Photometry and Colors of Protostars and Their Variations across Orion A and B

TL;DR

This study uses Herschel far-infrared data to analyze how protostar properties vary with environment in Orion A and B, revealing differences in evolutionary stages and envelope masses across regions.

Contribution

It provides new insights into environmental effects on protostar evolution and envelope mass using far-infrared photometry from the Herschel survey.

Findings

Class 0 protostars have distinct flux density ratios from more evolved protostars.

Protostars in the Integral-Shaped Filament and Orion B have more massive envelopes.

Star formation rates may be higher in denser regions like ISF and Orion B.

Abstract

The degree to which the properties of protostars are affected by environment remains an open question. To investigate this, we look at the Orion A and B molecular clouds, home to most of the protostars within 500 pc. At ~400 pc, Orion is close enough to distinguish individual protostars across a range of environments in terms of both the stellar and gas projected densities. As part of the Herschel Orion Protostar Survey (HOPS), we used the Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) to map 108 partially overlapping square fields with edge lengths of 5 arcmin or 8 arcmin and measure the 70 micron and 160 micron flux densities of 338 protostars within them. In this paper we examine how these flux densities and their ratio depend on evolutionary state and environment within the Orion complex. We show that Class 0 protostars occupy a region of the 70 micron flux density versus 160 micron to 70 micron flux density ratio diagram that is distinct from their more evolved counterparts. We then present evidence that the Integral-Shaped Filament (ISF) and Orion B contain protostars with more massive envelopes than those in the more sparsely populated LDN 1641 region. This can be interpreted as evidence for increasing star formation rates in the ISF and Orion B or as a tendency for more massive envelopes to be inherited from denser birth environments. We also provide technical details about the map-making and photometric procedures used in the HOPS program.