A Comprehensive Study of Ionized and Molecular Gas in M42A and M42B

Overview

This project is a study on molecular and ionized gas in a well -known star forming region, M42A and M42B (Orion Nebula). H2 (molecular hydrogen) is the most common molecule in space, but it’s very difficult to detect. For years, scientists have used CO (carbon monoxide) to search for H2. The problem with CO is that it can only detect H 2 in high densities. CH (methylidyne) is another well-known proxy for molecular hydrogen, which is difficult to detect directly, but can find H 2 in low densities. The research question was: “Is there detectable ionized hydrogen and H2 in M42A and M42B?” and the hypothesis was “ If we observe CH in M42A and M42B, then it will help us assess the abundance of H 2 and observing H RRLs will help us assess the presence of ionized hydrogen gas.” In July 2023 the CH was observed in 3.3 GHz lines using the 12-m radio telescope at the former Arecibo Observatory site. The observations were obtained using an ON -OFF method. All the radio telescope data on M42A and M42B were combined using a pipeline of Python programs, correcting for the Earth’s velocity toward these objects, and baselining the spectrum. Then the characteristics of any CH and H RRL detections were obtained using a gaussian fitting routine. After a series of calculations, we were finally able to obtain the amount of molecular hydrogen in M42A and M42B. We concluded that our hypothesis was accepted as we found signals for both ionized hydrogen and H2.