N159

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N159
Nebula N159 as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope

N159 (also known as MC 77) is an H-II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud .

N159 was first cataloged in a 1956 study of emission nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud by Karl Henize . The area has an integrated luminosity of L ≈ 9 × 10 6 L ⊙ and an area of ​​approx. 50 pc . As a result, it has a greater extent than other H-II areas in the Milky Way with comparable luminosity. N159 is approximately 52 kpc. In the southern area of ​​N159, the area has active star formation areas. These are located about 600 pc or 40 arcmin away from the better known star formation region 30 Doradus . The complex also includes molecular clouds and compact H-II components.

N159 also shows pronounced emission in the far infrared. In 1981 the first extragalactic protostar N159-P1 was discovered in N159. It is a very compact object in the red color range with a luminosity of L ≈ 2 × 10 4 L ⊙ . Its color index corresponds to a color temperature of approx. 850 K. Due to the presence of dust in N159, its extinction is A v = 10 mag.

Investigation of the CO emissions in N159 also revealed three molecular concentrations, each of which corresponds to a giant molecular cloud: N159-E, N159-W and N159-S. N159-E belongs to the central, larger H-II region of N159, while N159-W tends to have smaller H-II regions. In contrast, N159-S has only very weakly diffuse H-II regions and shows signs of the formation of star clusters. These areas all have a comparable radial velocity of v r = 234.1−238.5 km s −1 . It is therefore assumed that they also correlate physically with one another.

credentials

  1. ^ K. Henize: Catalogs of Halpha-EMISSION Stars and Nebulae in the Magellanic Clouds . In: Astrophysical Journal Supplement . 1956, bibcode : 1956ApJS .... 2..315H .
  2. ↑ Terry Jay Jones: Spitzer IRAC Observations of Star Formation in N159 in the LMC . In: Astrophys. J. Band 620 , 2005, arxiv : astro-ph / 0410708 .
  3. ↑ Terry Jay Jones: Stellar populations associated with the LMC Papillon Nebula . In: Astron. Astrophys. tape 422 , 2004, arxiv : astro-ph / 0403626 .
  4. ↑ Bengt E. Westerlund: The Magellanic Clouds . Cambridge University Press, 1997.
  5. ↑ Chang-Hui Rosie Chen: Spitzer View of Young Massive Stars in the LMC HII Complexes. II. N159. In: Astrophysics of Galaxies . 2010, arxiv : 1007.5326 .