Dissecting the different components of the modest accretion bursts of the very young protostar HOPS 373

Abstract

Observed changes in protostellar brightness can be complicated to interpret. In our JCMT~Transient monitoring survey, we discovered that a young binary protostar, HOPS 373, is undergoing a modest $30\%$ brightness increase at 850 $\hat{I}¼$m, caused by a factor of 1.8$-$3.3 enhancement in the accretion rate. The initial burst occurred over a few months, with a sharp rise and then shallower decay. A second rise occurred soon after the decay, and the source is still bright one year later. The mid-IR emission, the small-scale CO outflow mapped with ALMA, and the location of variable maser emission indicate that the variability is associated with the SW component. The near-infrared and NEOWISE $W1$ and $W2$ emission is located along the blueshifted CO outflow, spatially offset by $\sim 3$ to $4^{\prime \prime }$ from the SW component. The $K$-band emission imaged by UKIRT shows a compact H${}_2$ emission source at the edge of the outflow, with a tail tracing the outflow back to the source. The $W1$ emission, likely dominated by scattered light, brightens by 0.7 mag, consistent with expectations based on the sub-mm lightcurve. The signal of continuum variability in $K$-band and $W2$ is masked by stable H${}_2$ emission, as seen in our Gemini/GNIRS spectrum, and perhaps by CO emission. These differences in emission sources complicate infrared searches for variability of the youngest protostars.

29 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ