News

A French-Spanish research team has found very serious clues for the presence of a first hydrostatic core in a protostellar core located in the Perseus molecular cloud. The first hydrostatic core is a critical phase in the evolution pathway of a prestellar core towards the formation of a star. It’s a challenging premiere because this phase is very short, as compared with astronomical time scales, hence very difficult to pin point. The study has been led by a CNRS researcher from the LERMA laboratory (Laboratoire d'Etudes du rayonnement et de la Matiere en Astrophysique et Atmosphères LERMA – CNRS/Observatoire de Paris/UPMC/Université de Cergy Pontoise/ENS) ), using the NOEMA Interferometer operated by IRAM. It is published in the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal dated May 12, 2015.

Map in four rotational lines of methanol simultaneously observed with NOEMA. The contours show the distrubution of the 30-20 line displayed in the top left panel. The pink crosses show the position of the protostellar objects. The methanol emission is particularly intense in the molecular outflows ejected by the 2 protostellar objects. Credits: M. Gerin.

For the full press release (in French), please click here:

http://www.insu.cnrs.fr/node/5306

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