Bibcode
Poidevin, F.; Bastien, P.; Jones, T. J.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 741, Issue 2, article id. 112, 17 pp. (2011).
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11
2011
Journal
Citations
16
Refereed citations
13
Description
New visible and K-band polarization measurements of stars surrounding
molecular clouds in Orion A and stars in the Becklin-Neugebauer (BN)
vicinity are presented. Our results confirm that magnetic fields located
inside the Orion A molecular clouds and in their close neighborhood are
spatially connected. On and around the BN object, we measured the
angular offsets between the K-band polarization data and available
submillimeter (submm) data. We find high values of the polarization
degree, PK , and of the optical depth, τ K ,
close to an angular offset position of 90° whereas lower values of
PK and τ K are observed for smaller angular
offsets. We interpret these results as evidence for the presence of
various magnetic field components toward lines of sight in the vicinity
of BN. On a larger scale, we measured the distribution of angular
offsets between available H-band polarization data and the same submm
data set. Here we find an increase of langPH rang with
angular offset, which we interpret as a rotation of the magnetic field
by <~ 60°. This trend generalizes previous results on small
scales toward and around lines of sight to BN and is consistent with a
twist of the magnetic field on a larger scale toward OMC-1. A comparison
of our results with several other studies suggests that a two-component
magnetic field, perhaps helical, could be wrapping the OMC-1 filament.