The Diamond Ring in Cygnus X: Advanced stage of an expanding bubble of ionised carbon

¹ I. Physikalisches Institut, Universität zu Köln, Zülpicher Str. 77, 50937 Köln, Germany
² European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 2, 85748 Garching, Germany
³ SOFIA Science Center, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94 045, USA
⁴ Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux, Université de Bordeaux, CNRS, B18N, 33615 Pessac, France
⁵ Nordic Optical Telescope, Rambla José Ana Fernández Pérez 7, 38711 Breña Baja, Spain
⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Munkegade 120, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
⁷ Purple Mountain Observatory, and Key Laboratory of Radio Astronomy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 10 Yuanhua Road, Nanjing 210023, PR China
⁸ Max-Planck Institut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69, 53121 Bonn, Germany
⁹ National Radio Astronomy Observatory, PO Box O, 1003 Lopezville Road, Socorro, NM 87801, USA
¹⁰ Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
¹¹ Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, PO Box 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands

^★ Corresponding author: dannhauer@ph1.uni-koeln.de

Received: 28 June 2025
Accepted: 2 September 2025

Abstract

The ‘Diamond Ring’ within Cygnus X, south-west of the DR21 ridge, stands out as a prominent, nearly circular structure in infrared (IR) and far-infrared (FIR) emission, spanning approximately 6 pc in diameter. It is enclosed by clumpy molecular clouds seen in CO lines and contains an H II region, visible in cm emission. It resembles a classical H II region associated with an expanding bubble seen routinely in the 158 μm line of ionised carbon ([C II]). However, our recent observations utilising the Stratospheric Observatory for Far-Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) under the FEEDBACK program for the spectrally resolved [C II] line have revealed a slightly tilted ring with a mass of ~10³ M_⊙, advancing at a velocity of ~1.3 km s⁻¹. The bulk emission of the gas has a line-of-sight (LOS) velocity around −2 km s⁻¹. The [C II] data revealed that the ‘Diamond’ of the Diamond Ring is an unrelated, dense gas clump at a LOS velocity of ~7 km s⁻¹. The driving source, which is also responsible for powering the associated H II region, is a B0.5e star, classified by our IR spectroscopy. This observation marks the first instance where we observe only a slowly expanding ring of [C II] emission and not an expanding 3D shell. We suggest that the H II region (along with its associated [C II] bubble), initially formed by a massive star, expanded outwards from a flat slab of molecular gas nearly in the plane of the sky. Presently, the [C II] ring is confined by the swept-up gas of the slab, while the parts of the shell moving in the directions perpendicular to the shell along the LOS have dissipated, resulting in a notable decrease in the expansion of the remaining ring. This scenario is supported by dedicated simulations that trace the evolution of the [C II] bubble. Our observations support the scenario of H II region evolution in ‘flat’ molecular clouds, reported earlier in the literature. In this geometry, we propose that the Diamond Ring represents the terminal phase of an expanding [C II] bubble driven by stellar winds and thermal pressure.