Alignment of Circumstellar H-H Flows by the Interstellar Magnetic Field

Abstract

The highly collimated H-H flows and “jets” from young stellar objects have in some cases be reported to occur parallel to the direction of the interstellar magnetic field. In order to examine the reality and universality of the apparent connection between the H-H flows and the interstellar field, we compared the position angles of all H-H flows for which (1) the flow direction is well known from monochromatic images, and where (2) the local field direction can be derived unambiguously from interstellar polarization data. The result is given in Figure 1. A more detailed description of these results will be published elsewhere (Appenzeller 1989, Proc. 4th IAP Astrophysics Meeting, P. Delache et al. eds., Paris 1989).