Tightening the belt: Constraining the mass and evolution in SDC335 ^⋆

¹ Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
e-mail: adam.avison@manchester.ac.uk
² UK ALMA Regional Centre Node  
³ School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, Queens Buildings, The Parade, Cardiff, CF24 3AA, UK
⁴ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter, EX4 4QL, UK
⁵ ETH Zürich, Institut für Astronomie, Wolfgang-Pauli-Str. 27, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland

Received: 23 September 2014
Accepted: 15 January 2015

Abstract

Aims. Recent ALMA observations identified one of the most massive star-forming cores yet observed in the Milky Way: SDC335-MM1, within the infrared dark cloud SDC335.579-0.292. Along with an accompanying core MM2, SDC335 appears to be in the early stages of its star formation process. We aim to constrain the properties of the stars forming within these two massive millimetre sources.

Methods. Observations of SDC335 at 6, 8, 23 and 25 GHz were made with the Australia Telescope Compact Array. We report the results of these continuum measurements, which combined with archival data, allow us to build and analyse the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of the compact sources in SDC335.

Results. Three hyper-compact Hii regions within SDC335 are identified, two of which are within the MM1 core. For each HCHii region, we fit a free-free emission curve to the data, providing the derivation of the sources’ emission measure, ionising photon flux, and electron density. Using these physical properties we assign each HCHii region a zero-age main sequence (ZAMS) spectral type, finding two protostars with characteristics of spectral type B1.5 and one with a lower limit of B1–B1.5. Ancillary data from infrared to mm wavelength are used to construct free-free component subtracted SEDs for the mm-cores, which allows us to calculate the bolometric luminosities and revise the previous gas mass estimates.

Conclusions. The measured luminosities for the two mm-cores are lower than expected from accreting sources displaying characteristics of the ZAMS spectral type assigned to them. The protostars are still actively accreting, suggesting that a mechanism is limiting the accretion luminosity. We present the case for two different mechanisms capable of causing lower than expected accretion luminosity. Finally, using the ZAMS mass values as lower limit constraints, a final stellar population for SDC335 was synthesised finding SDC335 is likely to be in the process of forming a stellar cluster comparable to the Trapezium cluster and NGC 6334 I(N).