We performed observations of the HC$_3$N (24-23, 17-16, 11-10, 8-7) lines towards a sample consisting of 19 Galactic massive star-forming regions with the Arizona Radio Observatory 12-m and Caltech Submillimeter Observatory 10.4-m telescopes. HC$_3$N (24-23, 17-16, 11-10, 8-7) lines were detected in sources except for W44, where only HC$_3$N (17-16, 11-10) were detected. Twelve of the nineteen sources showed probable line wing features. The excitation temperatures were estimated from the line ratio of HC$_3$N (24-23) to HC$_3$N (17-16) for 18 sources and are in the range 23-57 K. The line widths of higher-$J$ transitions are larger than lower-$J$ ones for most sources. This indicates that the inner dense warm regions have more violent turbulence or other motions (such as rotation) than outer regions in these sources. A possible cutoff tendency was found around $L_{\rm IR}$ $\sim$ 10$^{6}$ $L_\odot$ in the relation between $L_{\rm IR}$ and full width at half maximum line widths.
We present sensitive observations of NH2D at 110.153599 GHz toward 50 Galactic massive star-forming regions with IRAM 30-m telescope. The NH2D transition is detected toward 36 objects, yielding a detection rate of 72%. Column densities of NH2D, HC3N and C18O for each source are derived by assuming local thermal equilibrium conditions with a fixed excitation temperature. The deuterium ratio of NH$_3$, defined as the abundance ratio of NH2D to NH3, for 19 sources is also obtained with the information of NH3 from the literature. The range of deuterium fractionation bends to be large in the late-s…
The RCW 106 molecular cloud complex is an active massive star-forming region where a ministarburst is taking place. We examined its magnetic structure by near-IR polarimetric observations with the imaging polarimeter SIRPOL on the IRSF 1.4 m telescope. The global magnetic field is nearly parallel to the direction of the Galactic plane and the cloud elongation. We derived the magnetic field strength of $\sim100$-$1600~μ$G for 71 clumps with the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method. We also evaluated the magnetic stability of these clumps and found massive star-forming clumps tend to be magnetically…
The goal of this paper is to study the spatial distribution of HNCO in massive star-forming regions, and investigate its spatial association with infrared sources, as well as physical conditions in region of HNCO emission. We have mapped nine massive star-forming regions in HNCO 5$_{05}-4_{04}$ with the Purple Mountain Observatory 13.7m telescope. The C18O maps of these sources were obtained simultaneously. The HNCO emission shows compact distribution, with emission peak centred on water masers. Nearly all the HNCO clumps show signs of embedded mid-infrared or far-infrared sources. The FWHM si…
We report trigonometric parallaxes for three massive star forming regions, corresponding to distances of $2.34^{+0.13}_{-0.11}$ kpc for G12.89+0.49 (also known as IRAS 18089-1732),$1.98^{+0.14}_{-0.12}$ kpc for G15.03-0.68 (in the M17 region), and $8.0^{+4.0}_{-2.0}$ kpc for G27.36-0.16. Both G12.89+0.49 and G15.03-0.68 are located in the Carina-Sagittarius spiral arm.
We present a multi-line study of the massive star-forming region IRAS 22506+5944. A new 6.7 GHz methanol maser was detected. 12CO, 13CO, C18O and HCO+ J = 1-0 transition observations reveal a star formation complex consisting mainly of two cores. The dominant core has a mass of more than 200 solar mass, while another one only about 35 solar mass. Both cores are obviously at different evolutionary stages. A 12CO energetic bipolar outflow was detected with an outflow mass of about 15 solar mass.
We studied sulfur chemistry of massive star-forming regions through single-dish submillimeter spectroscopy. OCS, O13CS, 13CS, H2S and SO transitions were observed toward a sample of massive star-forming regions with embedded UCH II or CH II regions. These sources could be divided into H II-hot core and H II-only sources based on their CH3CN emission. Our results show that the OCS line of thirteen sources is optically thick, with optical depth ranging from 5 to 16. Column densities of these molecules were computed under LTE conditions. CS column densities were also derived using its optically t…
We study the star formation (SF) law in 12 Galactic molecular clouds with ongoing high-mass star formation (HMSF) activity, as traced by the presence of a bright IRAS source and other HMSF tracers. We define the molecular cloud (MC) associated to each IRAS source using 13CO line emission, and count the young stellar objects (YSOs) within these clouds using GLIMPSE and MIPSGAL 24 micron Spitzer databases.The masses for high luminosity YSOs (Lbol>10~Lsun) are determined individually using Pre Main Sequence evolutionary tracks and the evolutionary stages of the sources, whereas a mean mass of 0.5…
We conducted the astrometry of H2O masers in the Galactic star-forming region Onsala 1 (ON1) with VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry (VERA). We measured a trigonometric parallax of 0.404+/-0.017 mas, corresponding to a distance of 2.47+/-0.11 kpc. ON1 is appeared to be located near the tangent point at the Galactic longitude of 69.54 deg. We estimate the angular velocity of the Galactic rotation at Sun, the ratio of the distance from Sun to the Galactic center and the Galactic rotation velocity at Sun, to be 28.7+/-1.3 km/s/kpc using the measured distance and proper motion of ON1. This value…
Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at radio wavelengths can provide astrometry accurate to 10 micro-arcseconds or better (i.e. better than the target GAIA accuracy) without being limited by dust obscuration. This means that unlike GAIA, VLBI can be applied to star-forming regions independently of their internal and line-of-sight extinction. Low-mass young stellar objects (particularly T Tauri stars) are often non-thermal compact radio emitters, ideal for astrometric VLBI radio continuum experiments. Existing observations for nearby regions (e.g. Taurus, Ophiuchus, or Orion) demonstrate t…
In this paper we selected a sample of massive star forming regions from the Red MSX Source (RMS) survey, to study star formation activities (mainly outflow and inflow signatures).
The role of magnetic fields in the formation of high-mass stars is still under debate, and recent measurements of their orientation and strength by using polarized maser emissions are contributing new insights. Masers polarization, in particular of the 6.7-GHz methanol masers, are one of the best probes of the magnetic field morphologies around massive protostars. Determining the magnetic field morphology around an increasing number of massive protostars at milliarcsecond resolution by observing 6.7-GHz methanol masers is crucial to better understand the role of magnetic fields in massive star…
We present optical photometric, spectroscopic data for the stars in the high Galactic latitude molecular cloud MBM 110. For the complete membership selection of MBM 110, we also analyze WISE mid-infrared data and Gaia astrometric data. Membership of individual stars is critically evaluated using the data mentioned above. The Gaia parallax of stars in MBM 110 is 2.667 +/- 0.095 mas (d = 375 +/- 13 pc), which confirms that MBM 110 is a small star-forming region in the Orion-Eridanus superbubble. The age of MBM 110 is between 1.9 Myr and 3.1 Myr depending on the adopted pre-main sequence evolutio…
Continuum observations of molecular clouds have revealed a surprising amount of substructure in the form of filaments of a few pc length and cores of ~0.1 pc diameter. Understanding the evolution of these substructures towards star formation requires the kinematic and dynamical insights provided uniquely by sensitive line observations at high angular and spectral resolution. In this short paper, we describe how an ngVLA can probe effectively the dynamics of filaments and cores in nearby star-forming molecular clouds using the NH3 rotation-inversion transitions at 24 GHz. Such emission has been…
There are several ongoing massive-star (mostly of spectral type O) surveys that are significantly increasing the quality and quantity of the spectroscopic information about these objects. Here we discuss and present results for two of them, GOSSS and NoMaDS. We also discuss recent and future developments on the Galactic O-Star Catalog and announce the upcoming availability of Marxist Ghost Buster, an IDL code that attacks spectral classification (hence the name) by using an interactive comparison with spectral libraries.
The standard interstellar ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (D/H) atoms is $\sim 1.5 \times 10^{-5}$. However, the deuterium fractionation is in fact found to be enhanced, to different degrees, in cold, dark cores, hot cores around massive star forming regions, lukewarm cores, and warm cores ({\it hereafter}, hot corinos) around low-mass star forming regions. In this paper, we investigate the overall differences in the deuterium chemistry between hot cores and hot corinos. We have modelled the chemistry of dense gas around low-mass and massive star forming regions using a gas-grain chemical model…
We present the initial results of our investigation of the star-forming complex W49, one of the youngest and most luminous massive star forming regions in our Galaxy. We used Spitzer/Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) data to investigate massive star formation with the primary objective to locate a representative set of protostars and the clusters of young stars that are forming around them. We present our source catalog with the mosaics from the IRAC data. In this study we used a combination of IRAC, MIPS, Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) and UKIRT Deep Infrared Sky Survey (UKIDSS) data to identif…
The relation between the mass accretion rate onto the circumstellar disc and the rate of mass ejection by magnetically driven winds is investigated using three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics simulations. Using a spherical cloud core with a varying ratio of thermal to gravitational energy, which determines the mass accretion rate onto the disc, to define the initial conditions, the outflow propagation for approximately 10^4 yr after protostar formation is then calculated for several cloud cores. The mass ejection rate and accretion rate are comparable only when the magnetic energy of the init…
We have tested some relations for star formation rates used in extra-galactic studies for regions within the Galaxy. In nearby molecular clouds, where the IMF is not fully-sampled, the dust emission at 24 micron greatly underestimates star formation rates (by a factor of 100 on average) when compared to star formation rates determined from counting YSOs. The total infrared emission does no better. In contrast, the total far-infrared method agrees within a factor of 2 on average with star formation rates based on radio continuum emission for massive, dense clumps that are forming enough massive…
We have undertaken a Parkes ammonia spectral line study, in the lowest two inversion transitions, of southern massive star formation regions, including young massive candidate protostars, with the aim of characterising the earliest stages of massive star formation. 138 sources from the submillimetre continuum emission studies of Hill et al., were found to have robust (1,1) detections, including two sources with two velocity components, and 102 in the (2,2) transition. We determine the ammonia line properties of the sources: linewidth, flux density, kinetic temperature, NH$_3$ column density an…
VLBI multi-epoch water maser observations are a powerful tool to study the dense, warm shocked gas very close to massive protostars. The very high-angular resolution of these observations allow us to measure the proper motions of the masers in a few weeks, and together with the radial velocity, to determine their full kinematics. In this paper we present a summary of the main observational results obtained toward the massive star-forming regions of Cepheus A and W75N, among them: (i) the identification of different centers of high-mass star formation activity at scales of 100 AU; (ii) the disc…
We present sensitive NIR (J, H and K) imaging observations toward four luminous massive star forming regions in the Norma Spiral Arm: G324.201+0.119, G328.307+0.432, G329.337+0.147 and G330.949-0.174. We identify three clusters of young stellar objects (YSO) based on surface density diagnostics. We also find that sources detected only in the H and K-bands and with colors corresponding to spectral types earlier than B2, are likely YSOs. We analyze the spatial distribution of stars of different masses and find signatures in two clusters of primordial mass segregation which can't be explained as …
MHD simulations show that the magnetic field can drive molecular outflows during the formation of massive protostars. The best probe to observationally measure both the morphology and the strength of this magnetic field at scales of 10-100 au is maser polarization. We measure the direction of magnetic fields at mas resolution around a sample of massive star-forming regions to determine whether there is a relation between the orientation of the magnetic field and of the outflows. In addition, by estimating the magnetic field strength via the Zeeman splitting measurements, the role of magnetic f…
We have performed the astrometry of H2O masers in the Galactic star-forming region Onsala 2 North (ON2N) with the VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry.We obtained the trigonometric parallax of 0.261+/-0.009 mas, corresponding to the heliocentric distance of 3.83+/-0.13 kpc. ON2N is expected to be on the solar circle, because its radial velocity with respect to the Local Standard of Rest (LSR) is nearly zero. Using present parallax and proper motions of the masers, the Galactocentric distance of the Sun and the Galactic rotation velocity at the Sun are found to be R_0 = 7.80+/-0.26 kpc and Thet…
Here we present the first results from ALMA observations of 1 mm polarized dust emission towards the W43-MM1 high mass star forming clump. We have detected a highly fragmented filament with source masses ranging from 14Msun to 312Msun, where the largest fragment, source A, is believed to be one of the most massive in our Galaxy. We found a smooth, ordered, and detailed polarization pattern throughout the filament which we used to derived magnetic field morphologies and strengths for 12 out of the 15 fragments detected ranging from 0.2 to 9 mG. The dynamical equilibrium of each fragment was eva…
We show that massive stars and stellar clusters are formed simultaneously, the global evolution of the forming cluster is what allows the central stars to become massive. We predict that massive star forming clumps, such as those observed in Motte et al. 2007, contract and grow in mass leading to the formation of massive stars. This occurs as mass is continually channeled from large radii onto the central proto-stars, which can become massive through accretion. Using SPH simulations of massive star forming clumps in a Giant Molecular Cloud, we show that clumps are initially diffuse and filamen…
We present 30 and 40 micron imaging of the massive protostar G35.20-0.74 with SOFIA-FORCAST. The high surface density of the natal core around the protostar leads to high extinction, even at these relatively long wavelengths, causing the observed flux to be dominated by that emerging from the near-facing outflow cavity. However, emission from the far-facing cavity is still clearly detected. We combine these results with fluxes from the near-infrared to mm to construct a spectral energy distribution (SED). For isotropic emission the bolometric luminosity would be 3.3x10^4 Lsun. We perform radia…
We performed the astrometry of H2O masers in the Galactic star-forming region G48.61+0.02 with the VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry (VERA). We derived a trigonometric parallax of 199+/-7 micro as, which corresponds to a distance of 5.03+/-0.19 kpc. The distance to G48.61+0.02 is about a half of its far kinematic distance, which was often assumed previously. This distance places G48.61+0.02 in the Sagittarius-Carina arm and near the active star forming region and the supernova remnant W51. We also obtained the three dimensional motion of G48.61+0.02, and found that it has a large peculiar m…
Understanding the processes that determine the stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) is a critical unsolved problem, with profound implications for many areas of astrophysics. In molecular clouds, stars are formed in cores, gas condensations which are sufficiently dense that gravitational collapse converts a large fraction of their mass into a star or small clutch of stars. In nearby star-formation regions, the core mass function (CMF) is strikingly similar to the IMF, suggesting that the shape of the IMF may simply be inherited from the CMF. Here we present 1.3 mm observations, obtained with AL…
We observed three high-mass star-forming regions in the W3 high-mass star formation complex with the Submillimeter Array and IRAM 30 m telescope. These regions, i.e. W3 SMS1 (W3 IRS5), SMS2 (W3 IRS4) and SMS3, are in different evolutionary stages and are located within the same large-scale environment, which allows us to study rotation and outflows as well as chemical properties in an evolutionary sense. While we find multiple mm continuum sources toward all regions, these three sub-regions exhibit different dynamical and chemical properties, which indicates that they are in different evolutio…
We present a multiwavelength study of 28 Galactic massive star-forming H II regions. For 17 of these regions, we present new distance measurements based on Gaia DR2 parallaxes. By fitting a multicomponent dust, blackbody, and power-law continuum model to the 3.6 $μ$m through 10 mm spectral energy distributions, we find that ${\sim}34$% of Lyman continuum photons emitted by massive stars are absorbed by dust before contributing to the ionization of H II regions, while ${\sim}68$% of the stellar bolometric luminosity is absorbed and reprocessed by dust in the H II regions and surrounding photodi…
We report trigonometric parallax measurements of masers in the massive star forming complex W43 from VLBA observations as part of the BeSSeL Survey. Based on measurements of three 12 GHz methanol maser sources (G029.86-00.04, G029.95-00.01 and G031.28+00.06) and one 22 GHz water maser source (G031.58+00.07) toward W43, we derived a distance of $5.49^{+0.39}_{-0.34}$ kpc to W43. By associating the masers with CO molecular clouds, and associating the clouds kinematically with CO longitude-velocity spiral features, we assign W43 to the Scutum spiral arm, close to the near end of the Galactic bar.…
MYStIX (Massive Young Star-Forming Complex Study in Infrared and Xray) seeks to characterize 20 OB-dominated young clusters and their environs at distances d < 4 kpc using imaging detectors on the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Spitzer Space Telescope, and the United Kingdom InfraRed Telescope. The observational goals are to construct catalogs of star-forming complex stellar members with well-defined criteria, and maps of nebular gas (particularly of hot X-ray emitting plasma) and dust. A catalog of MYStIX Probable Complex Members (MPCMs) with several hundred OB stars and > 30, 000 low mass premai…
We report four trigonometric parallaxes for high-mass star-forming regions within 4 kpc of the Galactic center. These measurements were made with the VLBA as part of the BeSSeL Survey. By associating these sources kinematically with large-scale features in CO and HI longitude-velocity diagrams, we begin to outline some major features of the inner Milky Way: the Connecting arm, the near and far 3 kpc arms, and the Norma arm. The Connecting arm in the first Galactic quadrant lies closer to the Galactic center than the far 3 kpc arm and is offset by the long-bar's major axis near its leading edge…
Using the LOWZ and CMASS samples of the ninth data release (DR9) from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), I investigate properties of star forming galaxies and AGNs. The CMASS sample seriously suffers from the radial selection effect, even within the redshift 0.44<z<0.6, which will lead to statistical conclusions in the CMASS sample being less likely robust. In the LOWZ sample, the fraction of star-forming galaxies is nearly constant from the lowest density regime to the densest regime; the AGN fraction is also insensitive to the local environment. In addition, I note …
The innermost parsec around Sgr A* has been found to play host to two discs or streamers of O and W-R stars. They are misaligned by an angle approaching 90 degrees. That the stars are approximately coeval indicates that they formed in the same event rather than independently. We have performed SPH simulations of the infall of a single prolate cloud towards a massive black hole. As the cloud is disrupted, the large spread in angular momentum can, if conditions allow, lead to the creation of misaligned gas discs. In turn, stars may form within those discs. We are now investigating the origins of…
We report parallaxes and proper motions of three water maser sources in high-mass star-forming regions in the Outer Spiral Arm of the Milky Way. The observations were conducted with the Very Long Baseline Array as part of Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy Survey and double the number of such measurements in the literature. The Outer Arm has a pitch angle of 14.9 +/- 2.7 deg and a Galactocentric distance of 14.1 +/- 0.6 kpc toward the Galactic anticenter. The average motion of these sources toward the Galactic center is 10.7 +/- 2.1 km/s and we see no sign of a significant fall in the rotation cu…
We report a trigonometric parallax measurement with the Very Long Baseline Array for the water maser in the distant high-mass star-forming region G75.30+1.32. This source has a heliocentric distance of 9.25+-0.45 kpc, which places it in the Outer arm in the first Galactic quadrant. It lies 200 pc above the Galactic plane and is associated with a substantial HI enhancement at the border of a large molecular cloud. At a Galactocentric radius of 10.7 kpc, G75.30+1.32 is in a region of the Galaxy where the disk is significantly warped toward the North Galactic Pole. While the star-forming region h…
We explore the effect of different galactic disc environments on the properties of star-forming clouds through variations in the background potential in a set of isolated galaxy simulations. Rising, falling and flat rotation curves expected in halo dominated, disc dominated and Milky Way-like galaxies were considered, with and without an additional two-arm spiral potential. The evolution of each disc displayed notable variations that are attributed to different regimes of stability, determined by shear and gravitational collapse. The properties of a typical cloud were largely unaffected by the…
We report trigonometric parallaxes and proper motions of water masers for 12 massive star forming regions in the Perseus spiral arm of the Milky Way as part of the Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy (BeSSeL) Survey. Combining our results with 14 parallax measurements in the literature, we estimate a pitch angle of 9.9 +/- 1.5 degrees for a section of the Perseus arm. The three-dimensional Galactic peculiar motions of these sources indicate that on average they are moving toward the Galactic center and slower than the Galactic rotation.
We investigate the formation of circumnuclear gas structures from the tidal disruption of molecular clouds in galactic nuclei, by means of smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations. We model galactic nuclei as composed of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) and a nuclear star cluster (NSC) and consider different mass ratios between the two components. We find that the relative masses of the SMBH and the NSC have a deep impact on the morphology of the circumnuclear gas. Extended disks form only inside the sphere of influence of the SMBH. In contrast, compact rings naturally form outside the SMBH…
We investigate the median flattening of galaxies at $0.2<z<4.0$ in all five CANDELS/3D-HST fields via the apparent axis ratio $q$. We separate the sample into bins of redshift, stellar-mass, sérsic index, size, and UVJ determined star-forming state to discover the most important drivers of the median $q$ ($q_{med}$). Quiescent galaxies at $z<1$ and $M_{*}>10^{11}M_{\odot}$ are rounder than those at lower masses, consistent with the hypothesis that they have grown significantly through dry merging. The massive quiescent galaxies at higher redshift become flatter, and are as flat as star forming…
We have studied a sample of more than 25 000 young stars with proper motions and trigonometric parallaxes from the Gaia DR2 catalogue. The relative errors of their parallaxes do not exceed 10\%. The selection of stars belonging to active star-forming regions was made by Marton et al. based on data from the Gaia DR2 catalogue by invoking infrared measurements from the WISE and Planck catalogues. Low-mass T Tauri stars constitute the majority of sample stars. The following parameters of the angular velocity of Galactic rotation have been found from them: $Ω_0 =28.40\pm0.11$ km s$^{-1}$ kpc$^{-1}…
We present near-infrared JHKs imaging as well as K-band multi-object spectroscopy of the massive stellar content of W3 Main using LUCI at the LBT. We confirm 13 OB stars by their absorption line spectra in W3 Main and spectral types between O5V and B4V have been found. Three massive Young Stellar Objects are identified by their emission line spectra and near-infrared excess. From our spectrophotometric analysis of the massive stars and the nature of their surrounding HII regions we derive the evolutionary sequence of W3 Main and we find an age spread of 2-3 Myr.
Forming massive stars launch outflows of magnetic origin, which in fact serve as a marker for finding sites of massive star formation. However, both the theoretical and observational study of the mechanisms that intervene in the formation and propagation of such outflows has been possible only until recent years. With this work, we aim to study in detail the mechanisms that drive highly collimated outflows from early stages of the formation of a massive star, and how those processes are impacted by the properties of the natal environment of the forming massive star. We perform a series of 31 s…
The velocity structure imprinted in the Hα emission line profiles contains valuable information about galactic outflows. Using a set of high-resolution zoom-in cosmological simulations of galaxies at z=2, we generate Hα emission line profiles, taking into account the temperature-dependent Hα emissivity, as well as dust extinction. The Hα line can be described as a sum of two gaussians, as typically done with observations. In general, its properties are in good agreement with those observed in local isolated galaxies with similar masses and star formation rates, assuming a spatially constant cl…
We present our recent efforts to unveil and understand the origin of massive stars outside the three massive star clusters in the Galactic Center. From our HST/NICMOS survey of the Galactic Center, we have identified 180 Paschen-alpha emitting sources, most of which should be evolved massive stars with strong optically thin stellar winds. Recently, we obtained Gemini GNIRS/NIFS H- and K-band spectra of eight massive stars near the Arches cluster. From their radial velocities, ages and masses, we suggest that in our sample, two stars are previous members of the Arches cluster, while other two s…
We describe a sub-galactic main sequence (SGMS) relating star formation rate surface density ($Σ_{\textrm{SFR}}$) and stellar mass density ($Σ_{\star}$) for distinct regions within star forming galaxies, including their nuclei. We use a sample of 246 nearby star-forming galaxies from the "Star Formation Reference Survey" and demonstrate that the SGMS holds down to $ \sim $1 kpc scales with a slope of $α=0.91$ and a dispersion of 0.31 dex, similar to the well-known main sequence (MS) measured for globally integrated star formation rates (SFRs) and stellar masses. The SGMS slope depends on galax…
We report measurements of trigonometric parallaxes for six high-mass star-forming regions in the Scutum spiral arm of the Milky Way as part of the BeSSeL Survey. Combining our measurements with 10 previous measurements from the BeSSeL Survey yields a total sample of 16 sources in the Scutum arm with trigonometric parallaxes in the Galactic longitude range from 5 deg to 32 deg. Assuming a logarithmic spiral model, we estimate a pitch angle of 19.8 (+/-3.1) deg for the Scutum arm, which is larger than pitch angles reported for other spiral arms. The high pitch angle of the arm may be due to the …
We present the second installment of the Massive Star-forming Regions (MSFRs) Omnibus X-ray Catalog (MOXC2), a compilation of X-ray point sources detected in Chandra/ACIS observations of 16 Galactic MSFRs and surrounding fields. MOXC2 includes 13 ACIS mosaics, three containing a pair of unrelated MSFRs at different distances, with a total catalog of 18,396 point sources. The MSFRs sampled range over distances of 1.3 kpc to 6 kpc and populations varying from single massive protostars to the most massive Young Massive Cluster known in the Galaxy. By carefully detecting and removing X-ray point s…
We present Very Large Array observations of the 7_0-6_1 A^+ methanol maser transition at 44 GHz towards NGC 6334F, G8.67-0.36, and M17. These arcsecond resolution observations complete a previous, larger VLA survey of this maser transition in high-mass star-forming regions reported by Kurtz et al. We confirm the presence of 44 GHz methanol maser emission in all three sources, detecting eight distinct maser components in NGC 6334F, twelve components in G8.67-0.36 and one in M17.
We present a structural study of 182 obscured Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) at z<=1.5, selected in the COSMOS field from their extreme infrared to X-ray luminosity ratio and their negligible emission at optical wavelengths. We fit optical to far-infrared spectral energy distributions and analyze deep HST imaging to derive the physical and morphological properties of their host galaxies. We find that such galaxies are more compact than normal star-forming sources at similar redshift and stellar mass, and we show that it is not an observational bias related to the emission of the AGN. Based on t…
We examine the relation between oxygen abundances in the narrow-line regions (NLRs) of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) estimated from the optical emission lines through the strong-line method (the theoretical calibration of Storchi-Bergmann et al.(1998)), via the direct Te-method, and the central intersect abundances in the host galaxies determined from the radial abundance gradients. We found that the Te-method underestimates the oxygen abundances by up to ~2 dex (with average value of ~0.8 dex) compared to the abundances derived through the strong-line method. This confirms the existence of th…
We investigate the structure of the interstellar medium (ISM) and identify the location of possible embedded excitation sources from far-infrared (FIR) line and mid-infrared continuum emission maps. We carried out imaging spectroscopic observations of four giant Galactic star-forming regions with the Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) onboard AKARI. We obtained [OIII] 88 micron and [CII] 158 micron line intensity maps of all the regions: G3.270-0.101, G333.6-0.2, NGC3603, and M17. For G3.270-0.101, we obtained high-spatial-resolution [OIII] 88 micron line-emission maps and a FIR continuum ma…
The total extragalactic $γ$-ray flux provides a powerful probe into the origin and evolution of the highest energy processes in our universe. An important component of this emission is the isotropic $γ$-ray background (IGRB), composed of sources that cannot be individually resolved by current experiments. Previous studies have determined that the IGRB can be dominated by either misaligned active galactic nuclei (mAGN) or star-forming galaxies (SFGs). However, these analyses are limited, because they have utilized binary source classifications and examined only one source class at a time. We pe…
We present a wide-field (~6'x6') and deep near-infrared (Ks band: 2.14 micro m) circular polarization image in the Orion nebula, where massive stars and many low-mass stars are forming. Our results reveal that a high circular polarization region is spatially extended (~0.4 pc) around the massive star-forming region, the BN/KL nebula. However, other regions, including the linearly polarized Orion bar, show no significant circular polarization. Most of the low-mass young stars do not show detectable extended structure in either linear or circular polarization, in contrast to the BN/KL nebula. If…
