2010/06/01 by C. Watson, U. Hanspal, A. Mengistu +1 · 53 citations
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Chemistry #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Infrared #Optics #Photodissociation #Photometry (optics) #Physics #Radiative transfer #Sky #Star formation #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Young stellar object #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/716/2/1478
published in The Astrophysical Journal 716(2), 1478-1492 (IOP Publishing) · 35 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ
arxiv created 2010/06/01 · openalex publication_date 2010/06/02 · arxiv updated 2015/05/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We use Two Micron All Sky Survey, GLIMPSE, and MIPSGAL survey data to analyze the young stellar object (YSO) and warm dust distribution around several mid-infrared-identified bubbles. We identify YSOs using J -band to 8 μm photometry and correlate their distribution relative to the photodissociation region (PDR; as traced by diffuse 8 μm emission), which we assume to be associated with and surrounding an H ii region. We find that only 20% of the sample H ii regions appear to have a significant number of YSOs associated with their PDRs, implying that triggered star formation mechanisms acting on the boundary of the expanding H ii region do not dominate in this sample. We also measure the temperature of dust inside 20 H ii regions using 24 μm and 70 μm MIPSGAL images. In eight circularly symmetric sources, we analyze the temperature distribution and find shallower temperature gradients than predicted by an analytic model. Possible explanations of this shallow temperature gradient are a radially dependent grain-size distribution and/or non-equilibrium radiative processes.