Molecular clumps and star formation associated with the infrared dust bubble N131

¹ National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100012 Beijing PR China
e-mail: zcp0507@gmail.com
² NAOC – TU Joint Center for Astrophysics, 850000 Lhasa, PR China
³ University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100080 Beijing, PR China

Received: 13 August 2012
Accepted: 19 December 2012

Abstract

Aims. The aim is to explore the interstellar medium around the dust bubble N131 and search for signatures of star formation.

Methods. We have performed a multiwavelength study around the N131 with data taken from large-scale surveys of infrared observation with online archive. We present new observations of three CO J = 1−0 isotope variants from Purple Mountain Observatory 13.7 m telescope. We analyzed the distribution of the molecular gas and dust in the environment of the N131. We used color−color diagrams to search for young stellar objects and to identify ionizing star candidates.

Results. The kinematic distance of  ~8.6 kpc has been adopted as the distance of the bubble N131 from the Sun in this work. We find a ring of clouds in CO emission coincident with the shell of N131 seen in the Spitzer telescope images, and two giant elongated molecular clouds of CO emission appearing on opposite sides of the ringlike shell of N131. There is a cavity within the bubble at 1.4 GHz and 24 μm. Seven IRAS point sources are distributed along the ringlike shell of the bubble N131. Fifteen ionizing stars and 63 YSO candidates have been found. The clustered class I and II YSOs are distributed along the elongated clouds in the line of sight.