The B1 shock in the L1157 outflow as seen at high spatial resolution
  We present high spatial resolution (750 AU at 250 pc) maps of the B1 shock in
the blue lobe of the L1157 outflow in four lines: CS (3-2), CH3OH (3_K-2_K),
HC3N (16-15) and p-H2CO (2_02-3_01). The combined analysis of the morphology
and spectral profiles has shown that the highest velocity gas is confined in a
few compact (~ 5 arcsec) bullets while the lowest velocity gas traces the wall
of the gas cavity excavated by the shock expansion. A large velocity gradient
model applied to the CS (3-2) and (2-1) lines provides an upper limit of 10^6
cm^-3 to the averaged gas density in B1 and a range of 5x10^3< n(H2)< 5x10^5
cm^-3 for the density of the high velocity bullets. The origin of the bullets
is still uncertain: they could be the result of local instabilities produced by
the interaction of the jet with the ambient medium or could be clump already
present in the ambient medium that are excited and accelerated by the expanding
outflow. The column densities of the observed species can be reproduced
qualitatively by the presence in B1 of a C-type shock and only models where the
gas reaches temperatures of at least 4000 K can reproduce the observed HC3N
column density.
