Other
Scientific paper
May 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008aas...212.1804p&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #212, #18.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.212
Other
Scientific paper
M17 is among the youngest, most massive nearby star-formation regions in the Galaxy. It features a bright H II region erupting as a blister from the side of a massive molecular cloud. Infrared survey images from IRAS and the Galactic Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE) show that M17 lies on the rim of a large dust shell 0.5 deg in diameter ( 14 pc at 1.6 kpc). We have obtained maps of 12CO and 13CO (J=2-1) emission from the Submillimeter Telescope on Mt. Graham that reveal the shell in filamentary molecular gas at v 20 km/s, linking the M17 giant molecular cloud to a neighboring dense molecular cloud 0.5 deg to the North. We have searched for candidate young stellar objects (YSOs) using GLIMPSE, MIPSGAL, 2MASS, and MSX survey data and found over 400 candidate YSOs in the vicinity of the M17 complex. YSOs are apparent along the entire rim of the molecular shell, including a YSO cluster within a prominent infrared dark cloud diametrically opposite the M17 H II region. We also identify several candidate ionizing stars lying inside the molecular shell. We suggest that the
molecular shell is an expanding bubble outlining a faint, diffuse H II region several Myr old. Within the last 1 Myr, the expansion of this precursor H II region may have helped trigger the formation of the massive cluster ionizing the M17 H II region itself. More recently, the bubble appears to have triggered massive star formation at the edge of the northern molecular cloud. This picture of large-scale massive star formation propagating through a molecular cloud in a Galactic spiral arm parallels patterns of star formation observed in other galaxies.
Bieging John H.
Churchwell Edward
Kang Miju
Povich Matthew S.
Whitney Barbara A.
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