THE COUNTERJET OF HH 30: NEW LIGHT ON ITS BINARY DRIVING SOURCE

Abstract

We present new [SII] images of the HH 30 jet and counterjet observed in 2006, 2007, and 2010 that allowed us to measure with improved accuracy the positions and proper motions of the jet and counterjet knots. Our results show that the motion of the knots is essentially ballistic, with the exception of the farthest knots, which trace the large scale C-shape bending of the jet. The observed bending of the jet can be produced by a relative motion of the HH 30 star with respect to its surrounding environment, caused either by a possible proper motion of the HH 30 star, or by the entrainment of environment gas by the red lobe of the nearby L1551-IRS 5 outflow. Alternatively, the bending can be produced by the stellar wind from a nearby CTTS, identified in the 2MASS catalog. The proper motion velocities of the knots of the counterjet show more variations than those of the jet. In particular, we identify two knots of the counterjet that have the same kinematic age but whose velocities differ by almost a factor of two. Thus, it appears that counterjet knots launched simultaneously can be ejected with very different velocities. We confirm that the observed wiggling of the jet and counterjet arises from the orbital motion of the jet source in a binary system. Precession is of secondary importance in shaping the jet. We derive an orbital period $\tau_o=114\pm2$ yr and a mass function $m\mu_c^3=0.014\pm0.006$ $M_\odot$. For a mass of the system of $m=0.45\pm0.04$ $M_\odot$ (the value inferred from the disk kinematics) we obtain a mass $m_j=0.31\pm0.04$ $M_\odot$ for the jet source, a mass $m_c=0.14\pm0.03$ $M_\odot$ for the companion, and a binary separation of $a=18.0\pm0.6$ AU. This binary separation coincides with the value required to account for the size of the inner hole observed in the disk, attributed to tidal truncation in a binary system.