ATLASGAL - The APEX telescope large area survey of the galaxy at 870 μm

By F. Schuller, K. Menten, Y. Contreras, F. Wyrowski, Peter Schilke, L. Bronfman, Th. Henning, C. Walmsley, H. Beuther, S. Bontemps and 24 more. 2009

299 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Context. Thanks to its excellent 5100 m high site in Chajnantor, the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) systematically explore s the southern sky at submillimeter wavelengths, both in continuum and in spectral line emission. Studying continuum emission from interstellar dust is essential to locate the highest densit y regions in the interstellar medium, and to derive their masses, column densities, density structures, and larger scale morpholog ies. In particular, the early stages of (massive) star forma tion are still quite mysterious: only small samples of high-mass proto-stellar or young stellar objects have been studied in detail so far. Aims. Our goal is to produce a large scale, systematic database of massive pre- and proto-stellar clumps in the Galaxy, in order to better understand how and under what conditions star formation takes place. Only a systematic survey of the Galactic Plane can provide the statistical basis for unbiased studies. A well characteriz ed sample of Galactic star-forming sites will deliver an evolutionary sequence and a mass function of high-mass star-forming clumps. Such a systematic survey at submillimeter wavelengths also represents a pioneering work in preparation for Herschel and ALMA. Methods. The APEX telescope is ideally located to observe the inner Milky Way. The recently commissioned Large APEX Bolometer Camera (LABOCA) is a 295-element bolometer array observing at 870 µm, with a beam of 19. ′′ 2. Taking advantage of its large field of view (11. ′ 4) and excellent sensitivity, we have started an unbiased survey of the whole Galactic Plane accessible to APEX, with a typical noise level of 50‐70 mJy/beam: the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL). Results. As a first step, we have covered ∼95 deg 2 of the Galactic Plane. These data reveal∼6000 compact sources brighter than 0.25 Jy, or 63 sources per square degree, as well as extended structures, many of them filamentary. About two thirds of the c ompact sources have no bright infrared counterpart, and some of them are likely to correspond to the precursors of (high-mass) proto-stars or proto-clusters. Other compact sources harbor hot cores, compact Hii regions or young embedded clusters, thus tracing more evolved stages after star formation has occurred. Assuming a typical distance of 5 kpc, most sources are clumps smaller than 1 pc with masses from a few 10 to a few 100 M⊙. In this first introductory paper, we show preliminary resul ts from these ongoing observations, and discuss the mid- and long-term perspectives of the survey.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2922c763d84fff8d9c6f0ded40833336d7a429b2

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Citations in the corpus

The ATLASGAL survey: a catalog of dust condensations in the Galactic plane (2013, methodology): “The absolute flux uncertainty is estimated to be less than∼ 15% (Schuller et al. 2009).”
A CLASS I AND CLASS II CH3OH MASER SURVEY OF EGOs FROM THE GLIMPSE SURVEY (2009, background): “66+0.04) reported by Schuller et al. (2009).”
An Extreme Protocluster of Luminous Dusty Starbursts in the Early Universe (2017, background): “1 —Schuller 2012), following the prescription outlined in Siringo et al. (2009) and Schuller et al. (2009).”