HH 270/110 as a Jet/Shear Layer Interaction

Abstract New observations obtained with JWST of the protostellar HH 270 jet and the “deflected” HH 110 system show that HH 110 has a morphology of a series of distorted working surfaces. These working surfaces appear to be “deflected versions” of the heads of the incident HH 270 jet. We compute a series of 3D numerical simulations, in which we explore the possible parameters of a shearing environment that could give rise to the deflection of HH 270 into the HH 110 flow. We find that we need quite a high sideways velocity for the streaming environment (∼30 km s −1 ) in order to produce the complex structure observed in HH 110. This high velocity would be possible in an environment that has been strongly perturbed by the passage of other outflows.