The inner few hundred parsecs of the Milky Way, the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ), is our closest laboratory for understanding star formation in the extreme environments (hot, dense, turbulent gas) that once dominated the universe. We present an update on the first large-area survey to expose the sites of star formation across the CMZ at high-resolution in submillimeter wavelengths: the CMZoom survey with the Submillimeter Array (SMA). We identify the locations of dense cores and search for signatures of embedded star formation. CMZoom is a three-year survey in its final year and is mapping out the highest column density regions of the CMZ in dust continuum and a variety of spectral lines around 1.3 mm. CMZoom combines SMA compact and subcompact configurations with single-dish data from BGPS and the APEX telescope, achieving an angular resolution of about 4" (0.2 pc) and good image fidelity up to large spatial scales.
@article{arxiv.1610.05805,
title = {A Brief Update on the CMZoom Survey},
author = {Cara Battersby and Eric Keto and Qizhou Zhang and Steven N. Longmore and J. M. Diederik Kruijssen and Thushara Pillai and Jens Kauffmann and Dan Walker and Xing Lu and Adam Ginsburg and John Bally and Elisabeth A. C. Mills and Jonathan D. Henshaw and Katharina Immer and Nimesh Patel and Volker Tolls and Andrew J. Walsh and Katharine Johnston and Luis C. Ho},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.05805},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
4 pages, Astrophysics of the Galactic Centre, Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 322, 2016; R. Crocker, S. Longmore & G. Bicknell. CMZoom website: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/sma/LargeScale/CMZ/