Jiang Zhibo, Tamura Motohide, Fukagawa Misato, Hough Jim, Lucas Phil, Suto Hiroshi, Ishii Miki, Yang Ji
Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academic of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China.
Nature. 2005 Sep 1;437(7055):112-5. doi: 10.1038/nature04012.
The formation process for stars with masses several times that of the Sun is still unclear. The two main theories are mergers of several low-mass young stellar objects, which requires a high stellar density, or mass accretion from circumstellar disks in the same way as low-mass stars are formed, accompanied by outflows during the process of gravitational infall. Although a number of disks have been discovered around low- and intermediate-mass young stellar objects, the presence of disks around massive young stellar objects is still uncertain and the mass of the disk system detected around one such object, M17, is disputed. Here we report near-infrared imaging polarimetry that reveals an outflow/disk system around the Becklin-Neugebauer protostellar object, which has a mass of at least seven solar masses (M(o)). This strongly supports the theory that stars with masses of at least 7M(o) form in the same way as lower mass stars.
质量为太阳数倍的恒星的形成过程仍不清楚。两种主要理论是：几个低质量年轻恒星天体合并，这需要高恒星密度；或者像低质量恒星形成那样，通过吸积来自恒星周围盘的物质，并在引力坍缩过程中伴有外流。虽然已在低质量和中等质量年轻恒星天体周围发现了许多盘，但大质量年轻恒星天体周围盘的存在仍不确定，且在一个这样的天体M17周围检测到的盘系统质量也存在争议。在此，我们报告了近红外成像偏振测量结果，该结果揭示了贝克林 - 纽格鲍尔原恒星天体周围的一个外流/盘系统，该天体质量至少为7个太阳质量（M⊙）。这有力地支持了质量至少为7M⊙的恒星与低质量恒星以相同方式形成的理论。
