The Investigating Protostellar Accretion (IPA) program on JWST is focused on accretion in Class 0 protostars, and the interaction between their outflows and the innermost parts of their surrounding envelopes. The IPA sample includes five objects spread evenly in luminosity from 0.2 to 10,000 in solar units, which we observe with the IFUs in NIRSpec and MIRI for imaging spectroscopy. This is the first opportunity to characterize outflows at large angles from their axes; to study at Solar-system scales the envelope depletion which ends the star formation process; to measure the tightly-linked accretion and outflow rates without a large dynamical time lag between them; and to observe gas in protoplanetary disks at wavelengths which are a good match for disk energetics.

IPA’s results are a work in progress, with 80% of our MIRI observations less than a month old. I will concentrate on the highest highlights: our good constraints on the angular distribution of momentum in outflows, molecular gas in the inner parts of infant protoplanetary disks, and the precise and accurate measurement of (UV) accretion luminosity in protostars that lie behind 100-200 magnitudes of visual extinction.

Speaker: Dan Watson (University of Rochester)

All 2023 Spring Colloquium talks are held on Wednesdays at 3:00 PM.  You may join the colloquium in person at STScI’s John N. Bahcall Auditorium or virtually or at the links listed below. 

• Facebook Link: https://www.facebook.com/STScILiveScienceEvents
• Live Captioning Link: https://www.streamtext.net/player?event=STSI-ColloqiumSeries

Please direct questions or comments to contact above. The Spring Colloquium Committee members are: JHU Members: Kevin Schlaufman, Co-Chair, Ethan Vishniac, Arshia Jacob and STScI Members: Joel Green, Co-chair, Armin Rest, Co-chair and Andreea Petric.