Published in

EDP Sciences, Astronomy & Astrophysics, (619), p. A106, 2018

DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201833901

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3D shape of Orion A from Gaia DR2

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We use the Gaia DR2 distances of about 700 mid-infrared selected young stellar objects in the benchmark giant molecular cloud Orion A to infer its 3D shape and orientation. We find that Orion A is not the fairly straight filamentary cloud that we see in (2D) projection, but instead a cometary-like cloud oriented toward the Galactic plane, with two distinct components: a denser and enhanced star-forming (bent) Head, and a lower density and star-formation quieter ∼75 pc long Tail. The true extent of Orion A is not the projected ∼40 pc but ∼90 pc, making it by far the largest molecular cloud in the local neighborhood. Its aspect ratio (∼30:1) and high column-density fraction (∼45%) make it similar to large-scale Milky Way filaments (“bones”), despite its distance to the galactic mid-plane being an order of magnitude larger than typically found for these structures.