Abstract Details
| Name: Himanshu Tyagi Affiliation: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai Conference ID: ASI2024_540 Title : IPA on the Rocks: JWST Unveils the Building Blocks of Planetary Systems Authors and Co-Authors : Himanshu Tyagi, Manoj Puravankara, Mayank Narang, Will Rocha, Nashanty Brunken, Sam Federman, Adam Rubinstein, Tom Megeath, Dan Watson, Rob Gutermuth, Ewine F. van Dishoeck, and the IPA team Abstract Type : Oral Abstract Category : Stars, Interstellar Medium, and Astrochemistry in Milky Way Abstract : Protostars, representing the earliest stages of star formation, are essential to understand because they set the initial conditions of protoplanetary disks (birthplaces of planets) by regulating the physical and chemical properties of their natal envelope. The composition of dust and ice in the envelope, shaped by the energetic processes driven by the protostar, serves as the fundamental building material for planets and complex organic molecules (potential precursors of life). Protostars are best studied at wavelengths > 3 microns, as their dense natal envelopes result in significant extinction in the optical and UV. Investigating protostellar accretion across the mass spectrum (IPA) is a JWST Cycle 1 GO program to study protostars in a broad luminosity range of 0.1-10,000 solar luminosity using NIRSpec IFU and MIRI MRS (from 2.8 to 28 micron). With JWST's unprecedented sensitivity, angular resolution, and IFU capabilities, studying the diverse composition of ice and dust and their spatial distribution in protostellar envelopes is now possible. We will present the ice and dust inventory of five protostars observed by the IPA program. We have decomposed the chemical species contributing to the opacity in various ice and dust absorption features. For the first time, we have generated distribution maps of the volatile ice species in the vicinity of the protostar. These findings suggest the occurrence of past thermal processing of ice species, even in cases involving very low-luminosity protostars, thereby indicating possible episodic accretion-induced heating. We will discuss our results and their implications for star and planet formation. |