Bibcode
Manchado, A.; Stanghellini, Letizia; Villaver, Eva; Garcia-Segura, Guillermo; Shaw, Richard A.; Garcia-Hernandez, D. A.
Bibliographical reference
IAU General Assembly, Meeting #29, #2244526
Advertised on:
8
2015
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
We present high spatial resolution ($\approx60$--90 milliarcseconds)
images of the molecular hydrogen emission in the Planetary Nebula (PN)
NGC~2346.The data were acquired during the System Verification of the
Gemini Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics System (GeMS) + Gemini South
Adaptive Optics Imager GSAOI).At the distance of NGC~2346, 700 pc, the
physical resolution corresponds to 56 AU, which is slightly higher than
an H$\alpha$image of NGC~2346 obtained with WFPC2 onboard the
\textit{Hubble Space Telescope}.GeMS comprises multiple deformable
mirrors, three natural guide stars and five sodium laser guide
stars.GSAOI is a near-infrared camera used with GeMS on Gemini
South.GSAOI provides diffraction limited images in the 0.9--$2.4\mu$
range over a field of view of $85 \times 85$ arcsec, and a plate scale
of 0.02 arcseoc per pixel.With this unprecedented resolution we were
able to study in detail the structure of the molecular hydrogen within
the nebula for the first time.We found it to be composed of knots and
filaments, which at lower resolution had appeared to be a uniform torus
of material.The clumps range in size from 112 to 238 AU.We explain how
the formation of the clumps and filaments in this PN is consistent with
a mechanism in which a central hot bubble of nebular gas surrounding the
central star has been depressurized, and the thermal pressure of the
photoionized region drives the fragmentation of the swept-up shell.