scholarly journals The SEDIGISM survey: First Data Release and overview of the Galactic structure

2020 ◽  
Vol 500 (3) ◽  
pp. 3064-3082 ◽  
Author(s):  
F Schuller ◽  
J S Urquhart ◽  
T Csengeri ◽  
D Colombo ◽  
A Duarte-Cabral ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT The SEDIGISM (Structure, Excitation and Dynamics of the Inner Galactic Interstellar Medium) survey used the APEX telescope to map 84 deg2 of the Galactic plane between ℓ = −60° and +31° in several molecular transitions, including 13CO (2 – 1) and C18O (2 – 1), thus probing the moderately dense (∼103 cm−3) component of the interstellar medium. With an angular resolution of 30 arcsec and a typical 1σ sensitivity of 0.8–1.0 K at 0.25 km s−1 velocity resolution, it gives access to a wide range of structures, from individual star-forming clumps to giant molecular clouds and complexes. The coverage includes a good fraction of the first and fourth Galactic quadrants, allowing us to constrain the large-scale distribution of cold molecular gas in the inner Galaxy. In this paper, we provide an updated overview of the full survey and the data reduction procedures used. We also assess the quality of these data and describe the data products that are being made publicly available as part of this First Data Release (DR1). We present integrated maps and position–velocity maps of the molecular gas and use these to investigate the correlation between the molecular gas and the large-scale structural features of the Milky Way such as the spiral arms, Galactic bar and Galactic Centre. We find that approximately 60 per cent of the molecular gas is associated with the spiral arms and these appear as strong intensity peaks in the derived Galactocentric distribution. We also find strong peaks in intensity at specific longitudes that correspond to the Galactic Centre and well-known star-forming complexes, revealing that the 13CO emission is concentrated in a small number of complexes rather than evenly distributed along spiral arms.

1990 ◽  
Vol 140 ◽  
pp. 257-258
Author(s):  
J. V. Feitzinger ◽  
E. Harfst ◽  
J. Spicker

The model of selfpropagating star formation uses local processes (200 pc cell size) in the interstellar medium to simulate the large scale cooperative behaviour of spiral structure in galaxies. The dynamic of the model galaxies is taken into account via the mass distribution and the resulting rotation curve; flat rotation curves are used. The interstellar medium is treated as a multiphase medium with appropriate cooling times and density history. The phases are: molecular gas, cool HI gas, warm intercloud and HII gas and hot coronal fountain gas. A detailed gas reshuffeling between the star forming cells in the plane and outside the galactic plane controls the cell content. Two processes working stochastically are incooperated: the building and the decay of molecular clouds and the star forming events in the molecular clouds.


Author(s):  
A J Rigby ◽  
N Peretto ◽  
R Adam ◽  
P Ade ◽  
M Anderson ◽  
...  

Abstract Determining the mechanism by which high-mass stars are formed is essential for our understanding of the energy budget and chemical evolution of galaxies. By using the New IRAM KIDs Array 2 (NIKA2) camera on the Institut de Radio Astronomie Millimétrique (IRAM) 30-m telescope, we have conducted high-sensitivity and large-scale mapping of a fraction of the Galactic plane in order to search for signatures of the transition between the high- and low-mass star-forming modes. Here, we present the first results from the Galactic Star Formation with NIKA2 (GASTON) project, a Large Programme at the IRAM 30-m telescope which is mapping ≈2 deg2 of the inner Galactic plane (GP), centred on ℓ = 23${_{.}^{\circ}}$9, b = 0${_{.}^{\circ}}$05, as well as targets in Taurus and Ophiuchus in 1.15 and 2.00 mm continuum wavebands. In this paper we present the first of the GASTON GP data taken, and present initial science results. We conduct an extraction of structures from the 1.15 mm maps using a dendrogram analysis and, by comparison to the compact source catalogues from Herschel survey data, we identify a population of 321 previously-undetected clumps. Approximately 80 per cent of these new clumps are 70 μm-quiet, and may be considered as starless candidates. We find that this new population of clumps are less massive and cooler, on average, than clumps that have already been identified. Further, by classifying the full sample of clumps based upon their infrared-bright fraction – an indicator of evolutionary stage – we find evidence for clump mass growth, supporting models of clump-fed high-mass star formation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier D Fernández ◽  
Miguel A Martínez-Prieto ◽  
Pablo de la Fuente Redondo ◽  
Claudio Gutiérrez

The publication of semantic web data, commonly represented in Resource Description Framework (RDF), has experienced outstanding growth over the last few years. Data from all fields of knowledge are shared publicly and interconnected in active initiatives such as Linked Open Data. However, despite the increasing availability of applications managing large-scale RDF information such as RDF stores and reasoning tools, little attention has been given to the structural features emerging in real-world RDF data. Our work addresses this issue by proposing specific metrics to characterise RDF data. We specifically focus on revealing the redundancy of each data set, as well as common structural patterns. We evaluate the proposed metrics on several data sets, which cover a wide range of designs and models. Our findings provide a basis for more efficient RDF data structures, indexes and compressors.


2003 ◽  
Vol 212 ◽  
pp. 431-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delphine Russeil

The determination of the external galaxies morphology is generally based on their appearance on optical images. At these wavelengths young stellar population and their associated H ii regions, which can be grouped into star-forming complexes, appear preferentially located along spiral arms. Hence, it is naturally to use the same tracers to delineate the arms of our own Galaxy. But, where for external galaxies the distribution of star-forming complexes along the spiral arms is generally evident from direct imaging, for our Galaxy the spiral arms are strung out along the line of sight, leading to the superposition and mixing of information from the different complexes in the spiral arms making it difficult to distinguish them. Thus to access to the spatial distribution of young objects, hence to the large scale structure of our Galaxy, it is required first to identify and collect star-forming complexes (molecular clouds – H ii regions – OB stars) and then to determine their distance. In this framework I review the observational results and difficulties concerning the distribution of star-forming complexes and the determination of the structure of our Galaxy.


1981 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. H. McCutcheon ◽  
B. J. Robinson ◽  
J. B. Whiteoak

Millimetre-wave emission from the CO molecule has proven to be an extremely useful probe of the cold, dense clouds of molecular hydrogen in the Galaxy. Previous studies of the large-scale distribution of CO in the galactic plane (Scoville and Solomon 1975; Burton et al. 1975; Bash and Peters 1976; Burton and Gordon 1978; Solomon et al. 1979b; Cohen et al. 1980) have all been of the northern hemisphere and primarily at longitudes 0° ≤ l ≥ 80°. These studies have revealed the striking characteristic that the CO, and by implication molecular hydrogen clouds, are concentrated in a ring extending from 4 to 8 kpc from the galactic centre. This is in sharp contrast to the atomic hydrogen distribution, which is fairly constant over the extended region from 4 to 13 kpc but correlates well with other Population I indicators.


1993 ◽  
Vol 153 ◽  
pp. 439-440
Author(s):  
J.M. Wrobel ◽  
J.D.P. Kenney

The CO(J=1→0) emission from NGC 4710, a star–forming S0 galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, was synthesized with spatial and velocity resolutions of 7″ and 26 km s—1, respectively. The CO shows a compact morphology and co–rotates with the galaxy's stars and nuclear optical emission line gas. Analysis of the CO distribution and kinematics indicates that the nuclear molecular gas is probably gravitationally unstable, and this may explain why the galaxy is presently forming stars. Four possible origins for the nuclear molecular gas are considered. An origin via bulge star ejecta being deposited into a residual interstellar medium is favored.


2020 ◽  
Vol 492 (2) ◽  
pp. 2973-2995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin G Tress ◽  
Rowan J Smith ◽  
Mattia C Sormani ◽  
Simon C O Glover ◽  
Ralf S Klessen ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We present here the first of a series of papers aimed at better understanding the evolution and properties of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in a galactic context. We perform high-resolution, three-dimensional arepo simulations of an interacting galaxy inspired by the well-observed M51 galaxy. Our fiducial simulations include a non-equilibrium, time-dependent, chemical network that follows the evolution of atomic and molecular hydrogen as well as carbon and oxygen self-consistently. Our calculations also treat gas self-gravity and subsequent star formation (described by sink particles), and coupled supernova feedback. In the densest parts of the simulated interstellar medium (ISM), we reach sub-parsec resolution, granting us the ability to resolve individual GMCs and their formation and destruction self-consistently throughout the galaxy. In this initial work, we focus on the general properties of the ISM with a particular focus on the cold star-forming gas. We discuss the role of the interaction with the companion galaxy in generating cold molecular gas and controlling stellar birth. We find that while the interaction drives large-scale gas flows and induces spiral arms in the galaxy, it is of secondary importance in determining gas fractions in the different ISM phases and the overall star formation rate. The behaviour of the gas on small GMC scales instead is mostly controlled by the self-regulating property of the ISM driven by coupled feedback.


2020 ◽  
Vol 644 ◽  
pp. A97
Author(s):  
D. Colombo ◽  
S. F. Sanchez ◽  
A. D. Bolatto ◽  
V. Kalinova ◽  
A. Weiß ◽  
...  

Understanding how galaxies cease to form stars represents an outstanding challenge for galaxy evolution theories. This process of “star formation quenching” has been related to various causes, including active galactic nuclei activity, the influence of large-scale dynamics, and the environment in which galaxies live. In this paper, we present the first results from a follow-up of CALIFA survey galaxies with observations of molecular gas obtained with the APEX telescope. Together with the EDGE-CARMA observations, we collected 12CO observations that cover approximately one effective radius in 472 CALIFA galaxies. We observe that the deficit of galaxy star formation with respect to the star formation main sequence (SFMS) increases with the absence of molecular gas and with a reduced efficiency of conversion of molecular gas into stars, which is in line with the results of other integrated studies. However, by dividing the sample into galaxies dominated by star formation and galaxies quenched in their centres (as indicated by the average value of the Hα equivalent width), we find that this deficit increases sharply once a certain level of gas consumption is reached, indicating that different mechanisms drive separation from the SFMS in star-forming and quenched galaxies. Our results indicate that differences in the amount of molecular gas at a fixed stellar mass are the primary drivers for the dispersion in the SFMS, and the most likely explanation for the start of star formation quenching. However, once a galaxy is quenched, changes in star formation efficiency drive how much a retired galaxy differs in its star formation rate from star-forming ones of similar masses. In other words, once a paucity of molecular gas has significantly reduced star formation, changes in the star formation efficiency are what drives a galaxy deeper into the red cloud, hence retiring it.


2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (H15) ◽  
pp. 442-443
Author(s):  
Edith Falgarone ◽  
Pierre Hily-Blant

AbstractRegions of intense velocity-shears are identified on statistical grounds in nearby diffuse molecular gas: they form conspicuous thin (~ 0.03 pc) and parsec-long structures that do not bear the signatures of shocked gas. Several straight substructures, ~ 3 mpc thick, have been detected at different position-angles within one of them. Two exhibit the largest velocity-shears ever measured far from star forming regions, up to 780 kms−1pc−1. Their position-angles are found to be also those of 10-parsec striations in the I(100μm) dust emission of the large scale environment. The B field projections, where available in these fields, are parallel both to the parsec- and to one of the milliparsec-scale shears. These findings put in relation the small-scale intermittent facet of the gas velocity field and the large scale structure of the magnetic fields.


1994 ◽  
Vol 140 ◽  
pp. 168-169
Author(s):  
Tomoharu Oka ◽  
Tetsuo Hasegawa ◽  
Masahiko Hayashi ◽  
Toshihiro Handa ◽  
Sei'ichi Sakamoto

AbstractWe report a large scale mapping observation of the Galactic center region in the CO (J=2-1) line using the Tokyo-NRO 60cm survey telescope. Distribution of the CO (J=2-1) emission in the I-V plane suggests that molecular clouds forms a huge complex (Nuclear Molecular cloud Complex, NMC). Tracers of star formation activities in the last 106-108 years show that star formation has occured in a ring ~ 100 pc in radius. Relative to this Star Forming Ring, the molecular gas is distributed mainly on the positive longitude side. This may indicate that much of the gas in NMC is in transient orbit to fall into the star forming ring or to the nucleus in the near future.


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