Spectroscopic Analysis of Star-forming Regions in the Spiral Galaxy NGC 628

NGC 628 is one of many spiral galaxies that has been observed and analyzed to determine the chemical composition. Since there have been improvements in the methods of analysis recently, this paper finds new values for the electron temperatures within this galaxy. Additionally, it brings up a previously unnoticed iron line contamination problem that has affected the [O iii] temperatures and fluxes. Temperature results are compared against, the most recent chemical analysis of the same galaxy.

Ammonia Emission in Various Star-forming Environments: A Pilot Study of Planck Galactic Cold Clumps

The Planck Catalogue of Galactic Cold Clumps provides an all-sky sample of potential star-forming regions based on the submillimeter emission of their dust content. Around 1000 of these Planck objects were mapped with the James Clerk Maxwell telescope in the submillimeter range during the SCOPE survey, identifying prestellar and protostellar dense clumps inside them. We used the Effelsberg 100 m telescope to observe the emission lines of the NH3 inversion transitions toward a sample of 97 dense objects in varying environments in order to assess the physical parameters of their gas content. We derive their temperature, density, and velocity dispersion, correlating the resulting parameters with the environmental and evolutionary characteristics of the targets and with regard to their distance and physical size. We examine the dependence of physical parameters on distance and Galactic position and compare the gas-based and dust-continuum-based temperatures and densities. Together with the presence of maser emission and higher inversion transitions of ammonia, we may differentiate between certain groups of targets, e.g., filamentary, protostellar clumps, and high-latitude, core-sized, starless sources.

A Mid-infrared Study of Directly Imaged Planetary-mass Companions Using Archival Spitzer/IRAC Images

The atmospheres and accretion disks of planetary-mass and substellar companions provide an unprecedented look into planet and moon formation processes, most notably the frequency and lifetime of circumplanetary disks. In our ongoing effort to leverage the extraordinary sensitivity of the Spitzer/Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) at 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 μm to study wide planetary-mass and substellar companions near the diffraction limit, we present point-spread function fitting photometry of archival Spitzer/IRAC images for nine stars (G0 to M4+M7) in nearby star-forming regions or stellar associations that host companions at separations of ρ = 1.″17–12.″33. We detect all system primaries in all four IRAC channels and recover eight low-mass companions in at least one IRAC channel for our sample, five of which have not been resolved previously in IRAC images. We measure nonphotospheric [3.6]–[8.0] colors for four of the system companions (DH Tau B, 2M0441 B, SR 12 c, and ROXs 42B b), confirming or discovering the presence of circumstellar or circum(sub)stellar disks. We detect fluxes consistent with photospheric emission for four other companions (AB Pic b, CHXR 73 b, 1RXS J1609 b, and HD 203030 b) that are unlikely to host disks. Combined with past detections of accretion or disk indicators, we determine the global disk frequency of young (<15 Myr) wide companions with masses near the deuterium-burning limit to be 56% ± 12%.

Chemically Fresh Gas Inflows Detected in a Nearby High-mass Star-forming Region

We report the detection of a chemically fresh inflow that is feeding high-mass young-stellar-object (HMYSO) growth in the nearby high-mass star-forming region G352.63 made with both the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Submillimeter Array (SMA). High-quality images of the dust and molecular lines from both ALMA and SMA have consistently revealed a gravitationally controlled cold (∼10 K) gas inflow of chemically fresh molecules (e.g., CCH and HC3N) toward the central HMYSO and its surrounding dense gas structure, which has a possible torus- or disk-like morphology. The HMYSO is also observed to have an outflow, which is nearly perpendicular to the torus and its parental filament, and thus can be clearly separated from the inflows. These kinematic features provide observational evidence to support the conjecture that the infalling streamers in high-mass star-forming regions could proceed in a similar process to that observed in low-mass counterparts. The chemically fresh infalling streamers could also be involved in the disk or torus configuration, fragmentation, and accretion bursts that occur in both simulations and observations.

Small Protoplanetary Disks in the Orion Nebula Cluster and OMC1 with ALMA

The Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) is the nearest dense star-forming region at ∼400 pc away, making it an ideal target to study the impact of high stellar density and proximity to massive stars (the Trapezium) on protoplanetary disk evolution. The OMC1 molecular cloud is a region of high extinction situated behind the Trapezium in which actively forming stars are shielded from the Trapezium’s strong radiation. In this work, we survey disks at high resolution with Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array at three wavelengths with resolutions of 0.″095 (3 mm; Band 3), 0.″048 (1.3 mm; Band 6), and 0.″030 (0.85 mm; Band 7) centered on radio Source I. We detect 127 sources, including 15 new sources that have not previously been detected at any wavelength. 72 sources are spatially resolved at 3 mm, with sizes from ∼8–100 au. We classify 76 infrared-detected sources as foreground ONC disks and the remainder as embedded OMC1 disks. The two samples have similar disk sizes, but the OMC1 sources have a dense and centrally concentrated spatial distribution, indicating they may constitute a spatially distinct subcluster. We find smaller disk sizes and a lack of large (>75 au) disks in both our samples compared to other nearby star-forming regions, indicating that environmental disk truncation processes are significant. While photoevaporation from nearby massive Trapezium stars may account for the smaller disks in the ONC, the embedded sources in OMC1 are hidden from this radiation and thus must truncated by some other mechanism, possibly dynamical truncation or accretion-driven contraction.

VLT/MUSE and ATCA Observations of the Host Galaxy of the Short GRB 080905A at z = 0.122

Short-GRB progenitors could come in various flavors, depending on the nature of the merging compact stellar objects (including a stellar-mass black hole or not) or depending on their ages (millions or billions of years). At a redshift of z = 0.122, the nearly face-on spiral host of the short GRB 080905A is one of the closest short-GRB host galaxies identified so far. This made it a preferred target to explore spatially resolved star formation and to investigate the afterglow position in the context of its star formation structures. We used VLT/MUSE integral-field unit observations, supplemented by ATCA 5.5/9.0 GHz radio-continuum measurements and publicly available HST data, to study the star formation activity in the GRB 080905A host galaxy. The MUSE observations reveal that the entire host is characterized by strong line emission. Using the Hα line flux, we measure for the entire galaxy an SFR of about 1.6 M ⊙ yr−1, consistent with its non-detection by ATCA. Several individual star-forming regions are scattered across the host. The most luminous region has a Hα luminosity that is nearly four times as high as the luminosity of the Tarantula nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Even though star-forming activity can be traced as close to about 3 kpc (in projection) distance to the GRB explosion site, stellar population synthesis calculations show that none of the Hα-bright star-forming regions is a likely birthplace of the short-GRB progenitor.

Untangling the Galaxy. III. Photometric Search for Pre-main-sequence Stars with Deep Learning

A reliable census of pre-main-sequence stars with known ages is critical to our understanding of early stellar evolution, but historically there has been difficulty in separating such stars from the field. We present a trained neural network model, Sagitta, that relies on Gaia DR2 and 2 Micron All-Sky Survey photometry to identify pre-main-sequence stars and to derive their age estimates. Our model successfully recovers populations and stellar properties associated with known star-forming regions up to five kpc. Furthermore, it allows for a detailed look at the star-forming history of the solar neighborhood, particularly at age ranges to which we were not previously sensitive. In particular, we observe several bubbles in the distribution of stars, the most notable of which is a ring of stars associated with the Local Bubble, which may have common origins with Gould’s Belt.