High resolution imaging of NGC 2346 with GSAOI/GeMS: disentangling the planetary nebula molecular structure to understand its origin and evolution

Abstract

We present high spatial resolution ($\approx$ 60--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 + Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager. At the distance of NGC 2346, 700 pc, the physical resolution corresponds to $\approx$ 56 AU, which is slightly higher than that an [N II] image of NGC 2346 obtained with HST/WFPC2. With this unprecedented resolution we were able to study in detail the structure of the H${}_2$ gas 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. 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.

accepted in ApJ (17 pages, 7 figures, 1 Table)

References in corpus (3)

• The Dynamical Evolution of Planetary Nebulae After the Fast Wind
• Determination of the Physical Conditions of the Knots in the Helix Nebula from Optical and Infrared Observations
• The planetary nebula IPHASXJ211420.0+434136 (Ou5): insights into common-envelope dynamical and chemical evolution

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