ABSTRACT
The canonical picture of star formation involves disk-mediated accretion, with Keplerian accretion disks and associated bipolar jets primarily observed in nearby, low-mass young stellar objects (YSOs). Recently, rotating gaseous structures and Keplerian disks have been detected around several massive (M > 8 Mâ) YSOs (MYSOs)1-4, including several disk-jet systems5-7. All the known MYSO systems are in the Milky Way, and all are embedded in their natal material. Here we report the detection of a rotating gaseous structure around an extragalactic MYSO in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The gas motion indicates that there is a radial flow of material falling from larger scales onto a central disk-like structure. The latter exhibits signs of Keplerian rotation, so that there is a rotating toroid feeding an accretion disk and thus the growth of the central star. The system is in almost all aspects comparable to Milky Way high-mass YSOs accreting gas from a Keplerian disk. The key difference between this source and its Galactic counterparts is that it is optically revealed rather than being deeply embedded in its natal material as is expected of such a massive young star. We suggest that this is the consequence of the star having formed in a low-metallicity and low-dust content environment. Thus, these results provide important constraints for models of the formation and evolution of massive stars and their circumstellar disks.
ABSTRACT
The physics of star formation and the deposition of mass, momentum and energy into the interstellar medium by massive stars ('feedback') are the main uncertainties in modern cosmological simulations of galaxy formation and evolution1,2. These processes determine the properties of galaxies3,4 but are poorly understood on the scale of individual giant molecular clouds (less than 100 parsecs)5,6, which are resolved in modern galaxy formation simulations7,8. The key question is why the timescale for depleting molecular gas through star formation in galaxies (about 2 billion years)9,10 exceeds the cloud dynamical timescale by two orders of magnitude11. Either most of a cloud's mass is converted into stars over many dynamical times12 or only a small fraction turns into stars before the cloud is dispersed on a dynamical timescale13,14. Here we report high-angular-resolution observations of the nearby flocculent spiral galaxy NGC 300. We find that the molecular gas and high-mass star formation on the scale of giant molecular clouds are spatially decorrelated, in contrast to their tight correlation on galactic scales5. We demonstrate that this decorrelation implies rapid evolutionary cycling between clouds, star formation and feedback. We apply a statistical method15,16 to quantify the evolutionary timeline and find that star formation is regulated by efficient stellar feedback, which drives cloud dispersal on short timescales (around 1.5 million years). The rapid feedback arises from radiation and stellar winds, before supernova explosions can occur. This feedback limits cloud lifetimes to about one dynamical timescale (about 10 million years), with integrated star formation efficiencies of only 2 to 3 per cent. Our findings reveal that galaxies consist of building blocks undergoing vigorous, feedback-driven life cycles that vary with the galactic environment and collectively define how galaxies form stars.
ABSTRACT
Highly collimated parsec-scale jets, which are generally linked to the presence of an accretion disk, are commonly observed in low-mass young stellar objects. In the past two decades, a few of these jets have been directly (or indirectly) observed from higher-mass (larger than eight solar masses) young stellar objects, adding to the growing evidence that disk-mediated accretion also occurs in high-mass stars, the formation mechanism of which is still poorly understood. Of the observed jets from massive young stars, none is in the optical regime (massive young stars are typically highly obscured by their natal material), and none is found outside of the Milky Way. Here we report observations of HH 1177, an optical ionized jet that originates from a massive young stellar object located in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The jet is highly collimated over its entire measured length of at least ten parsecs and has a bipolar geometry. The presence of a jet indicates ongoing, disk-mediated accretion and, together with the high degree of collimation, implies that this system is probably formed through a scaled-up version of the formation mechanism of low-mass stars. We conclude that the physics that govern jet launching and collimation is independent of stellar mass.
