Related papers: The evolution of young HII regions
Little is known about how high-mass stars form. Around 30\% of the young high-mass stars in the Galaxy are observed at the edges of ionized (HII) regions. Therefore these are places of choice to study the earliest stages of high-mass star…
The emission line ratios [OIII]5007/H-beta and [NII]6584/H-alpha have been adopted as an empirical way to distinguish between the fundamentally different mechanisms of ionization in emission-line galaxies. However, detailed interpretation…
We present the results of 450 and 850 micron continuum mapping of the HII region KR 140 using the SCUBA instrument on the JCMT. KR 140 is a small (5.7 pc diameter) HII region at a distance of 2.3+/-0.3 kpc. Five of the six IRAS point…
We investigate the ionized gas kinematics of HII regions in the disk of NGC 7331 using integral field unit data collected with the Circumgalactic H$\alpha$ Spectrograph (CH$\alpha$S). NGC 7331 is a well-studied nearby galaxy with HII…
Our current understanding is that intermediate- to high-mass stars form in a way similar to low-mass stars, that is, through disk accretion. However, the physical conditions that play a role in disk formation, evolution, and the possibility…
Massive stars form deeply embedded in dense molecular gas, which they stir and heat up and ionize. During an early phase, the ionization is confined to hypercompact HII regions, and the stellar radiation is entirely absorbed by dust, giving…
We are studying the impact of HII regions on star formation in their associated molecular clouds. In this paper we present JCMT RxA molecular line observations of S175 and environs. This is the first within a sample of ten HII regions and…
Ultracompact and hypercompact HII regions appear when a star with a mass larger than about 15 solar masses starts to ionize its own environment. Recent observations of time variability in these objects are one of the pieces of evidence that…
The cosmic abundance of hydrides depends critically on high-energy UV, X-ray, and particle irradiation. Here we study hydrides in star-forming regions where irradiation by the young stellar object can be substantial, and density and…
We summarize the status of our program of near-infrared adaptive optics observations of ultracompact HII regions. By means of selected results we demonstrate the usefulness of this technique for disentangling the complexity of massive…
To investigate the process of star formation triggered by the expansion of an HII region, we present a multi-wavelength analysis of the Galactic HII region RCW 120 and its surroundings. The collect and collapse model predicts that the layer…
We studied the environment of the dust bubble N10 in molecular emission. Infrared bubbles, first detected by the GLIMPSE survey at 8.0 $\mu$m, are ideal regions to investigate the effect of the expansion of the HII region on its…
Observations of the H66a recombination line from the ionized gas in the cluster of newly formed massive stars, G10.6-0.4, show that most of the continuum emission derives from the dense gas in an ionized accretion flow that forms an ionized…
To try and confirm the types of object in the list of 2298 potential HII regions identified by Hughes \& MacLeod from the IRAS Point Source Catalog, we selected a sample of 82 for observing at the VLA. We selected half with values of Y =…
Context: Theoretical models of early accretion during the formation process of massive stars have predicted that HII regions exhibit radio variability on timescales of decades. However, large-scale searches for such temporal variations with…
We describe the first three-dimensional simulation of the gravitational collapse of a massive, rotating molecular cloud that includes heating by both non-ionizing and ionizing radiation. We find that as the first protostars gain sufficient…
VLA radio continuum imaging reveals compact (<8 pc) ~1 mJy radio sources in the central 5" starburst region of the blue compact galaxy Henize 2-10. We interpret these radio knots as extremely young, ultra-dense HII regions. We model their…
The Palomar Integral Field Spectrograph was used to probe a variety of environments in nine nearby galaxies that span a range of morphological types, luminosities, metallicities, and infrared-to-blue ratios. For the first time,…
Recent observations and simulations have suggested that HII regions around massive stars may vary in their size and emitted flux on timescales short enough to be observed. This variability can have a number of causes, ranging from…
We present a detailed characterization of the population of compact radio-continuum sources in W51 A using subarcsecond VLA and ALMA observations. We analyzed their 2-cm continuum, the recombination lines (RL's) H77$\alpha$ and H30$\alpha$,…