The Milky Way Project Talk

Bow shocks

  • jules by jules moderator

    I find these tricky to identify and one or two posts suggest I'm not the only one so I thought it might help to have a collection of confirmed bow shocks. It can be difficult to decide if an arc is a bow shock or part of a bubble. Hopefully, studying images of confirmed bow shocks will make this decision easier! Please add to the collection if you come across any confirmed bow shocks.

    These are from the guide:

    Once in a while you might see bow shocks in the data. They are very rare but really interesting. They're so rare that we could only find two examples for this page! These could be large or small and they will look like arcs that form as stars push into the dust.

    enter image description here enter image description here

    There are two in this image of the LL Orionis region:

    http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap031115.html

    enter image description here

    And another - Zeta Orphiuchi:

    http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/images/5517-sig12-014-Massive-Star-Makes-Waves

    enter image description here

    This is Kappa Cassiopeiae:

    http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/spitzer/bow-shock-wave-20140220/#.VMbD1jWaVpQ

    Posted

  • ElisabethB by ElisabethB moderator

    I'm also having problems with bow shocks. Most of these images I would have classified as (half) bubbles. So how should we make the difference ?

    Posted