Published in

American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(551), p. L97-L100, 2001

DOI: 10.1086/319831

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

[ITAL]FUSE[/ITAL] and [ITAL]Hubble Space Telescope[/ITAL]/STIS Observations of Hot and Cold Gas in the AB Aurigae System

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

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We present the first observations of a Herbig Ae star with a circumstellar disk by the Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) as well as a simultaneous observation of the star obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope/Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). The spectra of AB Aurigae show emission and absorption features arising from gases that have a wide range in temperature, from hot O VI emission to cold H2 and CO absorption. Emissions from the highly ionized species O VI and C III present in the FUSE spectrum are redshifted, while absorption features arising from low-ionization species like O I, N I, and Si II are blueshifted and show characteristic stellar wind line profiles. We find that the total column density of H2 toward AB Aur from the FUSE spectrum is N(H2) = (6.8 ± 0.5) × 1019 cm-2. The gas kinetic temperature of the H2 derived from the ratio N(J = 1)/N(J = 0) is 65 ± 4 K. The column density of the CO observed in the STIS spectrum is N(CO) = (7.1 ± 0.5) × 1013 cm-2, giving a CO/H2 ratio of (1.04 ± 0.11) × 10-6. We also use the STIS spectrum to find the column density of H I, which permits us to calculate the total column density of hydrogen atoms, the fractional abundance of H2, and the gas-to-dust ratio.