English

A Census of Star Formation in the Outer Galaxy II: The GLIMPSE360 Field

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2020-07-22 v1 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

We have conducted a study of star formation in the outer Galaxy from 65\degr<l<< l <265\degr~in the region observed by the GLIMPSE360 program. This {\it Spitzer} warm mission program mapped the plane of the outer Milky Way with IRAC at 3.6 and 4.5~μ\mum. We combine the IRAC, {\it WISE}, and 2MASS catalogs and our previous results from another outer Galaxy survey and identify a total of 47,338 Young Stellar Objects (YSOs) across the field spanning >>180\degr\ in Galactic longitude. Using the DBSCANDBSCAN method on the combined catalog, we identify 618 clusters or aggregations of YSOs having 5 or more members. We identify 10,476 Class I, 29,604 Class II, and 7,325 anemic Class II/Class III YSOs. The ratio of YSOs identified as members of clusters was 25,528/47,338, or 54\%. We found 100 of the clusters identified have previously measured distances in the {\it WISE} \ion{H}{2} survey. We used these distances in our spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting of the YSOs in these clusters, of which 96 had YSOs with <3σ<3\sigma fits. We used the derived masses from the SED model fits to estimate the initial mass function (IMF) in the inner and outer Galaxy clusters: dividing the clusters by Galactocentric distances, the slopes were Γ=1.87±0.31\Gamma = 1.87 \pm 0.31 above 3~M_{\odot} for RGal<11.5R_{Gal} < 11.5~kpc and Γ=1.15±0.24\Gamma = 1.15 \pm 0.24 above 3~M_{\odot} for RGal>11.5R_{Gal} > 11.5~kpc. The slope of the combined IMF was found to be Γ=1.92±0.42\Gamma = 1.92 \pm 0.42 above 3~M_{\odot}. These values are consistent with each other within the uncertainties, and with literature values in the inner Galaxy high-mass star formation regions. The slopes are likely also consistent with a universal Salpeter IMF.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2006.03080,
  title  = {A Census of Star Formation in the Outer Galaxy II: The GLIMPSE360 Field},
  author = {Elaine Winston and Joseph Hora and Volker Tolls},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.03080},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

25 pages, 14 figures