Unlocking the Keyhole- H2 and PAHs emission from molecular clumps surrounding the Keyhole Nebula

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Keyhole; South Pole; The Keyhole; South pole
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.296.2936; http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jacara/Papers/pdf/asa99abs6.pdf

The Keyhole nebula is part of the Carina Nebula, a massive star forming/molecular cloud complex. It is bathed in the UV radiation eld from nearby massive stars including the spectacular star, Carina. Optical images of the Keyhole nebula show many interesting features including dark patches and bright-rimmed globules. These bright-rimmed globules are likely to be photo-dissociation regions (PDRs). The molecular gas in the Keyhole is extremely inhomogeneous, breaking into several clumps (of 10 M) (Cox & Bronfman, 1995) and are all associated with the optical features described above. These clumps may be the remaining denser fragments of a molecular cloud that was destroyed by stellar winds and the ionizing ux from the nearby massive stars. To better understand the environment surrounding these clumps we have imaged the Keyhole region at two wavelengths suitable for detecting emission coming from PDRs. The University of New South Wales InfraRed Fabry-Perot (UNSWIRF) was initially used to image H2 1{0 S(1) (2.12 m) emission across the Keyhole region, while the SPIREX/Abu thermal Infrared camera at the South Pole was used to image PAHs (3.29 m) emission.