Urquhart, JS, Wells, MRA, Pillai, T et al. (13 more authors) (2021) ATLASGAL – Evolutionary trends in high-mass star formation. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. stab3511. ISSN 0035-8711
Abstract
ATLASGAL is a 870-μm dust survey of 420 square degrees of the inner Galactic plane and has been used to identify ∼10 000 dense molecular clumps. Dedicated follow-up observations and complementary surveys are used to characterise the physical properties of these clumps, map their Galactic distribution and investigate the evolutionary sequence for high-mass star formation. The analysis of the ATLASGAL data is ongoing: we present an up-to-date version of the catalogue. We have classified 5007 clumps into four evolutionary stages (quiescent, protostellar, young stellar objects and H II regions) and find similar numbers of clumps in each stage, suggesting a similar lifetime. The luminosity-to-mass (Lbol/Mfwhm) ratio curve shows a smooth distribution with no significant kinks or discontinuities when compared to the mean values for evolutionary stages indicating that the star-formation process is continuous and that the observational stages do not represent fundamentally different stages or changes in the physical mechanisms involved. We compare the evolutionary sample with other star-formation tracers (methanol and water masers, extended green objects and molecular outflows) and find that the association rates with these increases as a function of evolutionary stage, confirming that our clasfication is reliable. This also reveals a high association rate between quiescent sources and molecular outflows, revealing that outflows are the earliest indication that star formation has begun and that star formation is already ongoing in many of the clumps that are dark even at 70 μm.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society following peer review. The version of record J S Urquhart, M R A Wells, T Pillai, S Leurini, A Giannetti, T J T Moore, M A Thompson, C Figura, D Colombo, A Y Yang, C König, F Wyrowski, K M Menten, A J Rigby, D J Eden, S E Ragan, ATLASGAL – Evolutionary trends in high-mass star formation, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2021;, stab3511, is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab3511. |
Keywords: | Surveys: Astronomical Data bases, ISM: evolution, submillimetre: ISM, stars: Formation, stars: early-type, Galaxy: kinematics and dynamics |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Physics and Astronomy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 09 Dec 2021 11:08 |
Last Modified: | 10 Dec 2021 13:35 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/mnras/stab3511 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:181320 |