Polarization profiles of scattered emission lines. II. General formalism for optically thin Rayleigh scattering

W. J. Henney, IA-UNAM, Mexico

A. C. Raga, UMIST, Manchester, UK

D. J. Axon, NRAL, UK

Astrophysical Journal 427, 288-304

Abstract:

Detailed comparisons are made between observations of scattered light upstream of the head of the Herbig-Haro (HH) 1 jet and predictions of simple scattering models. It is shown that, in order to unambiguously determine the velocity of the head of the jet (bow shock) with respect to the upstream dust, existing spectroscopic observations are insufficient and that spectropolarimetric observations of the scattered light are necessary. Such an independent measure of the bow shock velocity is important in order to test 'multiple outflow' theories of Herbig-Haro jets. It is also shown that the scattering dust must have a very forward-throwing scattering phase function (cos theta approx 0.7), and slight evidence is found for a dust-gas ratio that is higher than average.

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  • Will Henney <will@astroscu.unam.mx>
    Last modified: Tue Dec 19 16:44:51 CST 1995