Jialu Li
University of Maryland, College Park
SOFIA/EXES Survey of Gaseous Water in the Binary Hot Core W3 IRS 5
The formation and evolution of massive stars are not well understood because they are deeply embedded. As the mid-infrared (MIR) dust continuum originates from the disk photosphere, the absorption line studies at MIR allow us to directly probe the properties of warm, dense gas in those regions. High spectral resolution absorption spectroscopy at MIR, therefore, enables a unique exploration of the physical conditions and organic inventory in the innermost regions of massive star formation while overcoming beam dilution issues present in submillimeter observations. In this talk, I will present high spectral resolution spectroscopy focused on the hot core region associated with the massive young binary W3 IRS 5 using IRTF/iSHELL (R~88,000) and SOFIA/EXES (R~50,000). I will present our findings from the analysis of hundreds of individual rovibrational absorption lines of CO and water. Furthermore, I will discuss how our high-resolution SOFIA study helps the analysis of low spectral-resolution JWST/MIRI observations, which is hampered by the blending of individual transitions into broad absorption features, optical depth effects, and line depth reduction due to partial coverage of the source.
