Recent progress on molecular hydrogen in Orion

Abstract

The H2 emission from the Orion Molecular Cloud is, by an order of magnitude, the brightest known example of H2 emission, offering a means by which to estimate quantities connected with the mass flow. The size, temperature, velocity, and intensity of the lines can be used to infer the mass loss rate, the rate at which momentum is yielded to the cloud through masss loss, and the energy dissipation rate as the cloud is disrupted internally. Attention is accordingly given to the most recent observational results, with respect to morphology, extinction, level populations, and excitation temperature. The estimates concerning the mass loss phenomenon derived from H2 observations yield approximately the same numbers of those inferred from CO and H2O maser observations.