Protostars and Planets VI, Heidelberg, July 15-20, 2013
Poster 2S017
Spectro-Astrometry of Molecular Emission in DR Tauri
Brown, Logan (University of Missouri - St. Louis)
Troutman, Matthew (University of Missouri - St. Louis)
Gibb, Erika (University of Missouri - St. Louis)
Abstract:
To understand how life originated on Earth, we must investigate how
the necessary water and other prebiotic molecules were distributed
through the protoplanetary disk from which the solar system formed.
To infer this, we study analogs to the early solar system: T Tauri
stars. These objects are low-mass, pre-main sequence stars surrounded
by circumstellar disks of material from which planets are believed
to form. How water is distributed through a protoplanetary disk
is of particular interest. We present high-resolution, near-infrared
spectro-astrometric data for the T Tauri star DR Tau using NIRSPEC
at the Keck II telescope. Spectro-astrometry obtains sub-seeing spatial
information from emission lines originating in a non-point source
object, such as a circumstellar disk. We report the first detection of
water spectro-astrometric signatures in a protoplanetary disk. Three
water features near 3 μm were averaged together to produce the
total signal analyzed. Using a disk model, we constrained the position
angle of the disk (~140o), the inclination of the disk (~13o), and
the emitting region of the water emission lines (~0.056 - 0.38 AU).
Further more, we attempted to constrain the emitting region for observed
OH emission.
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