USRA-SOFIA Science Center
Gravity Driven Magnetic Field at ~1000 au Scales in High-mass Star Formation

ALMA observations of the high-mass star-forming region IRAS 18089−1732 at ~700 au resolution reveal a gravity-dominated system where magnetic fields are twisted into a spiral morphology by infalling, rotating material. The core's energy balance indicates that gravitational forces overwhelm magnetic support during the final assembly stages of massive stars.

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Absorption and Self-Absorption of [C II] and [O I] Far Infrared Lines Towards a Bright Bubble in the Nessie Infrared Dark Cloud
Using the upGREAT instrument on SOFIA, we have imaged [C II] 157.74 and [O I] 63.18 micron line emission from a bright photodissociation region (PDR) associated with an ionized ``bubble'' located in the Nessie Nebula, a filamentary infrared dark cloud. A comparison with ATCA data reveals a classic PDR structure, with a uniform progression from ionized gas, to photodissociated gas, and on to molecular gas from the bubble's interior to its exterior. [O I] line emission from the bubble's PDR reveals self-absorption features. Toward a FIR-bright protostar, both [O I] and [C II] show an absorption feature at a velocity of 18-18 km/s, the same velocity as an unrelated foreground molecular cloud. Since the gas density in typical molecular clouds is well below the [O I] and [C II] critical densities, the excitation temperatures for both lines are low (~20 K). The Meudon models demonstrate that the surface of a molecular cloud, externally illuminated by a standard G_0 = 1 interstellar radiation field, can produce absorption features in both transitions. Thus, the commonly observed [O I] and [C II] self-absorption and absorption features plausibly arise from the subthermally excited, externally illuminated, photodissociated envelopes of molecular clouds. The luminous young stellar object AGAL337.916-00.477, located precisely where the expanding bubble strikes the Nessie filament, is associated with two shock tracers: NH3 (3,3) maser emission and SiO 2-1 emission, indicating interaction between the bubble and the filament. The interaction of the expanding bubble with its parental dense filament has triggered star formation.
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SOFIA Infrared Spectrophotometry of Comet C/2012 K1 (Pan-STARRS)
We present pre-perihelion infrared 8 to 31 micron spectrophotometric and imaging observations of comet C/2012 K1 (Pan-STARRS), a dynamically new Oort Cloud comet, conducted with NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) facility (+FORCAST) in 2014 June. As a "new" comet (first inner solar system passage), the coma grain population may be extremely pristine, unencumbered by a rime and insufficiently irradiated by the Sun to carbonize its surface organics. The comet exhibited a weak 10 micron silicate feature ~1.18 +/- 0.03 above the underlying best-fit 215.32 +/- 0.95 K continuum blackbody. Thermal modeling of the observed spectral energy distribution indicates that the coma grains are fractally solid with a porosity factor D = 3 and the peak in the grain size distribution, a_peak = 0.6 micron, large. The sub-micron coma grains are dominated by amorphous carbon, with a silicate-to-carbon ratio of 0.80 (+0.25) (- 0.20). The silicate crystalline mass fraction is 0.20 (+0.30) (-0.10), similar to with other dynamically new comets exhibiting weak 10 micron silicate features. The bolometric dust albedo of the coma dust is 0.14 +/- 0.01 at a phase angle of 34.76 degrees, and the average dust production rate, corrected to zero phase, at the epoch of our observations was Afrho ~ 5340~cm.
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