Sequence structure emission in The Red Rectangle Bands

Abstract

We report high resolution (R~37,000) integral field spectroscopy of the central region (r<14arcsec) of the Red Rectangle nebula surrounding HD44179. The observations focus on the 5800A emission feature, the bluest of the yellow/red emission bands in the Red Rectangle. We propose that the emission feature, widely believed to be a molecular emission band, is not a molecular rotation contour, but a vibrational contour caused by overlapping sequence bands from a molecule with an extended chromophore. We model the feature as arising in a Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) with 45-100 carbon atoms.

13 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ. A version of the paper with full resolution figures is available at: http://www.aao.gov.au/local/www/rgs/Sequence-Structure/

References in corpus (2)

• PAHs as a tracer of star formation?
• The optical spectroscopy of extraterrestrial molecules

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• Current assessment of the Red Rectangle band problem
• A Review of AGB Mass Loss Imaging Techniques
• Aromatic Species in the Molecular Universe
• On the polarisation of the Red Rectangle optical emission bands