ATLASGAL — towards a complete sample of massive star forming clumps ⋆

By J. Urquhart, T. Moore, T. Csengeri, F. Wyrowski, F. Schuller, M. Hoare, S. Lumsden, J. Mottram, M. Thompson, K. Menten and 13 more. 2014

157 citations recorded by the source corpus.

By matching infrared-selected, massive young stellar objects (MYSOs) and compact HII regions in the RMS survey to massive clumps found in the submillimetre ATLASGAL survey, we have identified ∼1000 embedded young massive stars between 280 ◦ <l< 350 ◦ and 10 ◦ <l< 60 ◦ with| b|< 1.5 ◦ . Combined with an existing sample of radio-selected methanol masers and compact HII regions, the result is a catalogue of∼1700 massive stars embedded within∼1300 clumps located across the inner Galaxy, containing three observationally distinct subsamples, methanol-maser, MYSO and HII-region associations, covering the most important tracers of massive star formation, thought to represent key stages of evolution. We find that massive star formation is strongly correlated with the regions of highest column density in spherical, centrally condensed clumps. We find no sig nificant di fferences between the three samples in clump structure or the relative location of the embedded stars, which suggests that the structure of a clump is set before the onset of s tar formation, and changes little as the embedded object evolves towards the main sequence. There is a strong linear correlation between clump mass and bolometric luminosity, with the most massive stars forming in the most massive clumps. We find that the MYSO and HII-regio n subsamples are likely to cover a similar range of evolutionary stages and that the majority are near the end of their main accretion phase. We find few infrared-bright MYSOs asso ciated with the most massive clumps, probably due to very short pre-main sequence lifetimes in the most luminous sources.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/03fff9bda2f23f231bc5f6dd3e4fef9944daff58

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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ATLASGAL - properties of a complete sample of Galactic clumps (2017, methodology): “…at specific Galactocentric radii (e.g., Moore et al. 2012, Urquhart et al. 2014b) and found to be concentrated along loci in longitude-velocity space (Urquhart et al. 2014c), both of which confirm the spiral structure of the Milky Way and its connection to the ongoing star formation in the Galaxy.”