The Sun’s Birth Environment

Autor(en)

Steve Desch, Núria Miret-Roig

Abstrakt

Meteorites trace planet formation in the Sun’s protoplanetary disk, but they also record the influence of the Sun’s birth environment. Whether the Sun formed in a region like Taurus-Auriga with ∼10² stars, or a region like the Carina Nebula with ∼10⁶ stars, matters for how large the Sun’s disk was, for how long and from how far away it accreted gas from the molecular cloud, and how it acquired radionuclides like ²⁶Al. To provide context for the interpretation of meteoritic data, we review what is known about the Sun’s birth environment. Based on an inferred gas disk outer radius ≈50−90 AU, radial transport in the disk, and the abundances of noble gases in Jupiter’s atmosphere, the Sun’s molecular cloud and protoplanetary disk were exposed to an ultraviolet flux G₀∼30−3000 during its birth and first ≈10 Myr of evolution. Based on the orbits of Kuiper Belt objects, the Solar System was subsequently exposed to a stellar density ≈100M_⊙pc⁻³ for ≈100 Myr, strongly implying formation in a bound cluster. These facts suggest formation in a region like the outskirts of the Orion Nebula, perhaps 2 pc from the center. The protoplanetary disk might have accreted gas for many Myr, but a few ×10⁵ yr seems more likely. It probably inherited radionuclides from its molecular cloud, enriched by inputs from supernovae and especially Wolf-Rayet star winds, and acquired a typical amount of ²⁶Al.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Astrophysik

Externe Organisation(en)

Arizona State University

Journal

Space Science Reviews

Band

220

Anzahl der Seiten

20

ISSN

0038-6308

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-024-01113-x

Publikationsdatum

10-2024

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

103003 Astronomie, 103004 Astrophysik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Astronomy and Astrophysics, Space and Planetary Science

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/7913a6e5-af4e-4a30-ad7c-06ce4771bb1a