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A Multiscale Picture of the Magnetic Field and Gravity from a Large-scale Filamentary Envelope to Core-accreting Dust Lanes in the High-mass Star-forming Region W51

• Authors: Patrick M. Koch, Ya-Wen Tang, Paul T. P. Ho, Pei-Ying Hsieh, Jia-Wei Wang, Hsi-Wei Yen, Ana Duarte-Cabral, Nicolas Peretto, Yu-Nung Su

Patrick M. Koch et al 2022 The Astrophysical Journal 940 .

• Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 11.

Self-similar structures on two different scales, envelope-to-core scale (Section 5.1.1; left column) and local-collapsing-core scale (Section 5.1.3; right column), in their detected magnetic field morphologies (red segments, top row) and their gravitational vector fields (black arrows, bottom row). Green boxes mark the self-similar structures. On the envelope-to-core scale between e8 and e2, the gravitational field starts to be deflected in the north of e8, gradually pointing more toward e2. The more massive e2 core mostly displays an azimuthally symmetric gravitational field. This systematic deflection toward the more massive local center is seen again on smaller scales when zooming in between the cores e2-W and e2-E, e2-NW and e2-E/e2-W, and e8-S and e8-N. The B-field morphology shows a characteristic feature where the field segments are bent away from the less massive core and straightened toward the more massive local center. These recurring structures point at a multiscale collapse-within-collapse scenario that leaves its imprints both in the B-field and the gravitational vector field.