No Arabic abstract
IC342 is a nearby, late-type spiral galaxy with a young nuclear star cluster surrounded by several giant molecular clouds. The IC342 nuclear region is similar to the Milky Way and therefore provides an interesting comparison. We explore star formation in the nucleus using radio recombination line (RRL) and continuum emission at 5, 6.7, 33, and 35 GHz with the JVLA. These radio tracers are largely unaffected by dust and therefore sensitive to all of the thermal emission from the ionized gas produced by early-type stars. We resolve two components in the RRL and continuum emission within the nuclear region that lie east and west of the central star cluster. These components are associated both spatially and kinematically with two giant molecular clouds. We model these regions in two ways: a simple model consisting of uniform gas radiating in spontaneous emission, or as a collection of many compact HII regions in non-LTE. The multiple HII region model provides a better fit to the data and predicts many dense (ne ~ 10^4-10^5 cm-3), compact (< 0.1 pc) HII regions. For the whole nuclear region as defined by RRL emission, we estimate a hydrogen ionizing rate of NL ~ 2 x 10^{52} s^{-1}, corresponding to equivalent ~ 2000 O6 stars and a star formation rate of ~ 0.15 Msun/year. We detect radio continuum emission west of the southern molecular mini spiral arm, consistent with trailing spiral arms.
Massive clumps tend to fragment into clusters of cores and condensations, some of which form high-mass stars. In this work, we study the structure of massive clumps at different scales, analyze the fragmentation process, and investigate the possibility that star formation is triggered by nearby HII regions. We present a high angular resolution study of a sample of 8 massive proto-cluster clumps. Combining infrared data, we use few-arcsecond resolution radio- and millimeter interferometric data to study their fragmentation and evolution. Our sample is unique in the sense that all the clumps have neighboring HII regions. Taking advantage of that, we test triggered star formation using a novel method where we study the alignment of the centres of mass traced by dust emission at multiple scales. The eight massive clumps have masses ranging from 228 to 2279 $M_odot$. The brightest compact structures within infrared bright clumps are typically associated with embedded compact radio continuum sources. The smaller scale structures of $R_{rm eff}$ $sim$ 0.02 pc observed within each clump are mostly gravitationally bound and massive enough to form at least a B3-B0 type star. Many condensations have masses larger than 8 $M_odot$ at small scale of $R_{rm eff}$ $sim$ 0.02 pc. Although the clumps are mostly infrared quiet, the dynamical movements are active at clump scale ($sim$ 1 pc). We studied the spatial distribution of the gas conditions detected at different scales. For some sources we find hints of external triggering, whereas for others we find no significant pattern that indicates triggering is dynamically unimportant. This probably indicates that the different clumps go through different evolutionary paths. In this respect, studies with larger samples are highly desired.
I briefly review recent observations of regions forming low mass stars. The discussion is cast in the form of seven questions that have been partially answered, or at least illuminated, by new data. These are the following: where do stars form in molecular clouds; what determines the IMF; how long do the steps of the process take; how efficient is star formation; do any theories explain the data; how are the star and disk built over time; and what chemical changes accompany star and planet formation. I close with a summary and list of open questions.
Synthetic observations are playing an increasingly important role across astrophysics, both for interpreting real observations and also for making meaningful predictions from models. In this review, we provide an overview of methods and tools used for generating, manipulating and analysing synthetic observations and their application to problems involving star formation and the interstellar medium. We also discuss some possible directions for future research using synthetic observations.
We present multi-scale and multi-wavelength observations of the Galactic HII region S305, which is excited by massive O8.5V and O9.5V stars. Infrared images reveal an extended sphere-like shell (extension ~7.5 pc; at T_d = 17.5-27 K) enclosing the S305 HII region (size ~5.5 pc; age ~1.7 Myr). The extended structure observed in the Herschel temperature map indicates that the molecular environment of S305 is heated by the massive O-type stars. Regularly spaced molecular condensations and dust clumps are investigated toward the edges of the infrared shell, where the PAH and H_2 emission is also observed. The molecular line data show a signature of an expanding shell of molecular gas in S305. GMRT 610 and 1280 MHz continuum maps reveal overdensities of the ionized emission distributed around two O-type stars, which are surrounded by the horseshoe envelope (extension ~2.3 pc). A molecular gas deficient region/cavity is identified toward the center of the horseshoe envelope, which is well traced with PAH, H_2, molecular, and dust emission. The edges of the infrared shell are found to be located in the front of the horseshoe envelope. All these outcomes provide the observational evidence of the feedback of O-type stars in S305. Moreover, non-thermal radio emission is detected in S305 with an average spectral index alpha ~-0.45. The variations in alpha, ranging from -1.1 to 1.3, are explained due to soft synchrotron emission and either optically-thicker thermal emission at high frequencies or a suppression of the low-frequency emission by the Razin-Tsytovich effect.
We present observations of the portion of the nearby spiral galaxy IC342 using narrow band [SII] and H$alpha$ filters. These observations were carried out in November 2011 with the 2m RCC telescope at Rozhen National Astronomical Observatory in Bulgaria. In this paper we report coordinates, diameters, H$alpha$ and [SII] fluxes for 203 HII regions detected in two fields of view in IC342 galaxy. The number of detected HII regions is 5 times higher than previously known in these two parts of the galaxy.