A&A 399, 1083-1099 (2003)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20021826
The association of IRAS sources and
CO emission in
the outer Galaxy
C. R. Kerton1 and C. M. Brunt1, 2
1 National Research Council of Canada, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, PO Box 248, Penticton, BC V2A 6J9 Canada
2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr. NW, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 Canada
(Received 7 October 2002 / Accepted 9 December 2002 )
Abstract
We have revisited the question of the association of CO emission with
IRAS sources in the outer Galaxy using data from the FCRAO Outer
Galaxy Survey (OGS). The availability of a large-scale
high-resolution CO survey allows us to approach the question of
IRAS-CO associations from a new direction - namely we examined
all of the IRAS sources within the OGS region for associated
molecular material. By investigating the association of molecular
material with random lines of sight in the OGS region we were able to
construct a quantitative means to judge the likelihood that any given IRAS-CO
association is valid and to disentangle multiple emission components along the
line of sight. The paper presents a list of all of the IRAS-CO
associations in the OGS region. We show that, within the OGS region,
there is a significant increase (~22%) in the number of probable star
forming regions over previous targeted CO surveys towards IRAS sources.
As a demonstration of the utility of the IRAS-CO association table we
present the results of three brief studies on candidate zone-of-avoidance
galaxies with IRAS counterparts, far outer Galaxy CO
clouds, and very bright CO clouds with no associated IRAS sources. We
find that ~
25% of such candidate ZOAGs are Galactic objects. We have
discovered two new far outer Galaxy star-forming regions, and have
discovered six bright molecular clouds that we believe are ideal targets for the investigation of the earliest stages of sequential
star formation around HII regions.
Finally, this paper provides readers with the necessary data to
compare other catalogued data sets with the OGS data.
Key words: ISM: molecules -- infrared: ISM -- radio lines: ISM -- catalogs -- Galaxy: general
Offprint request: C. R. Kerton, charles.kerton@nrc.ca
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