Related papers: Hunting pre-stellar cores with APEX: overview

At the onset of high-mass star formation, accreting protostars are deeply embedded in massive cores made of gas and dust. Their spectral energy distribution is still dominated by the cold dust and rises steeply from near-to far-infrared…

Observations of molecular clouds reveal a complex structure, with gas and dust often arranged in filamentary rather than spherical geometries. The associations of pre- and proto- stellar cores with the filaments suggest a direct link with…

(Abridged) We have observed CS and C17O lines, and 1.2 mm cont. emission towards a sample of 130 high-mass protostellar candidates with DEC<-30 deg. This is the first step of the southern extension of a project started more than a decade…

Context. Low-mass star-forming cores differ from their surrounding molecular cloud in turbulence, shape, and density structure. Aims. We aim to understand how dense cores form out of the less dense cloud material by studying the connection…

Deep JHKs photometry was obtained towards eight dense molecular cores and J-H vs. H-Ks color-color plots are presented. Our photometry, sensitive to the detection of a 1 solar mass, 1 X 10^6 year old star through approx. 35 - 50 magnitudes…

We present results from two Herschel observing programs using the Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer. During three separate campaigns, we obtained Herschel data for 24 stars at 70, 100, and 160 microns. We chose stars that were…

Most stars, including the Sun, are born in rich stellar clusters containing massive stars. Therefore, the study of the chemical reservoir of massive star-forming regions is crucial to understand the basic chemical ingredients available at…

Improving our understanding of the initial conditions and earliest stages of protostellar collapse is crucial to gain insight into the origin of stellar masses, multiple systems, and protoplanetary disks. Observationally, there are two…

We aim to study dust properties of massive star forming regions in the outer Galaxy, in a direction opposite to the Galactic center. We present observations of six outer Galaxy point sources IRAS 01045+6505, 01420+6401, 05271+3059,…

We carried out deep and wide-field near- and mid-infrared observations for a sample of 8 bright-rimmed clouds (BRCs). Supplemented with the $Spitzer$ archival data, we have identified and classified 44 to 433 young stellar objects (YSOs)…

We have observed the HCO+ J=3-2 line toward 17 starless cores selected from the list of Ward-Thompson et al. (1994). Six of these cores have line asymmetries indicative of collapse. The excess of blue-skewed profiles over red-skewed…

High-latitude ($|b|>30^{\circ}$) molecular clouds have virial parameters that exceed 1, but whether these clouds can form stars has not been studied systematically. Using JCMT SCUBA-2 archival data, we surveyed 70 fields that target…

Triggered star formation around HII regions could be an important process. The Galactic HII region RCW 79 is a prototypical object for triggered high-mass star formation. We take advantage of Herschel data from the surveys HOBYS, "Evolution…

Aims: Our goal is to set constraints on the evolutionary state of the dense core Cha-MMS1 in the Chamaeleon I molecular cloud. Methods: We analyze molecular line observations carried out with the new submillimeter telescope APEX. We look…

We found that in regions of high mass star formation the CS emission correlates well with the dust continuum emission and is therefore a good tracer of the total mass while the N$_2$H$^+$ distribution is frequently very different. This is…

We present 1D radiative transfer modelling of the envelopes of a sample of 18 low-mass protostars and pre-stellar cores with the aim of setting up realistic physical models, for use in a chemical description of the sources. The density and…

Although first considered as too diluted for the formation of molecules in-situ and too harsh an environment for their survival, the interstellar medium has turned out to host a rich palette of molecular species: to date, 256 species have…

We develop a self-consistent model for the equilibrium gas temperature and size-dependent dust temperature in cold, dense pre-stellar cores, assuming an arbitrary power-law size distribution of dust grains. Compact analytical expressions…

In order to obtain a census of the pre-stellar and star-forming molecular cores, we have begun an unbiased survey in CS and N2H+ of the L1630 and L1641 molecular clouds. The use of these two molecular species enables us to quantify and…

Far-infrared and (sub)millimeter fluxes can be used to study dust in protoplanetary disks, the building blocks of planets. Here, we combine observations from the Herschel Space Observatory with ancillary data of 284 protoplanetary disks in…