From Massive Protostars to a Giant H II Region: Submillimeter Imaging of the Galactic Ministarburst W43

By Fr'ed'erique Motte, Peter Schilke, D. Lis. 2002

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We have carried out a submillimeter continuum and spectroscopic study of the W43 main complex, a massive star-forming region, which harbors a giant H II region. The maps reveal a filamentary structure containing ~50 fragments with masses of 40-4000 M☉ and typical diameters of 0.25 pc. Their large sizes, large nonthermal velocities (Δv ~ 5 km s-1), and high densities (nH2 ~ 106 cm-3) suggest that they are protoclusters and excellent sites to form massive stars. Follow-up observations are necessary, but we have already identified three protoclusters to be very good candidates for containing very young massive protostars. The starburst cluster that excites the giant H II region has a large impact on the molecular complex. However, it remains unclear whether this first episode of star formation is triggering the formation of new massive stars, through ionization shocks crossing the closeby molecular clouds. W43 is thus an ideal laboratory to investigate massive star formation from the protostellar phase to that of giant H II regions. Moreover, the very active star-forming complex W43 may be considered a Galactic ministarburst region that could be used as a miniature model of starburst galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a63533ca2093d1fa4338effcabaf831342c06064

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Citations in the corpus

The earliest phases of high-mass star formation: a 3 square degree millimeter continuum mapping of Cygnus X (2007, methodology): “According to previous studies of high-mass star forming regions (see e.g. Motte et al. 2003), the main source of contamination of 1.2 mm fluxes is the free-free emission from H regions.”
The initial conditions of star formation in the Ophiuchus main cloud: Kinematics of the protocluster condensations , (2007, methodology): “These Ophiuchus condensations, which were identified using a multi-resolution analysis equivalent to a wavelet decomposition (cf. Starck et al. 1998; Motte et al. 2003), are seenon the same spatial scales as protostellar envelopes (i.e., ∼ 2300–4500 AU or∼ 15′′−30′′ in L1688).”
A multi-scale, multi-wavelength source extraction method: getsources (2012, methodology): “Motte et al. (2003, 2007)’s mre-gcl (created for studies of star formation using ground-based submillimeter continuum imaging) combines gaussclumps with the image filtering based on a wavelet decomposition.”
Filaments and ridges in Vela C revealed by Herschel: from low-mass to high-mass star-forming sites (2011, methodology): “Sources were identified using the multi-wavelength multi-resolution getsources extraction routine (Men’shchikov et al. 2010) which is consistent with the MRE-GCL algorithm (Motte et al. 2003) used for the HOBYS programme during the Herschel science demonstration phase (e.g. Motte et al. 2010).”
Ammonia from cold high-mass clumps discovered in the inner Galactic disk by the ATLASGAL survey (2012, methodology): “This clump is located in the W43 high-mass star forming region and is revealed as a compact cloud fragment detected at 1.3 mm and 350 μm by Motte et al. (2003).”
Molecular Clouds in the Milky Way (2015, methodology): “These algorithms have been subsequently adapted and applied to two-dimensional data of cloud column densities provided by dust extinction and dust emission maps (Motte et al. 2003, Román-Zúñiga et al. 2009).”
ATLASGAL - The APEX telescope large area survey of the galaxy at 870 μm (2009, background): “As an example, Motte et al. (2003) estimated the contribution from free-free emissionat 1.3 mm in the compact fragments found within the W43 massive star-forming region, which harbors a giant Hii region.”
Dynamic star formation in the massive DR21 filament (2010, unknown): “This sort of line profile was also found in the high-mass star-forming region W43 (Motte et al. 2003).”
STAR FORMATION ACTIVITY OF CORES WITHIN INFRARED DARK CLOUDS (2009, background): “…masses are smaller than the sizes and masses of cluster-forming clumps (102–103 M , ∼1 pc, which are typical of IRDCs themselves; Lada & Lada 2003; Motte et al. 2003) but larger than hot and cold cores which will form individual stars (1–100 M , <0.1 pc; Myers & Benson 1983; Ward-Thompson et…”
Characterizing precursors to stellar clusters with Herschel (2011, background): “The dominant mode of star formation, and perhaps the only mode for massive star formation seems to be clustered (Lada & Lada 2003; de Wit et al. 2005).”