Issue |
A&A
Volume 616, August 2018
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | L10 | |
Number of page(s) | 7 | |
Section | Letters to the Editor | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201832930 | |
Published online | 21 August 2018 |
Letter to the Editor
ALMA observations of RCW 120 Fragmentation at 0.01 pc scale⋆
1
Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, LAM, Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, Marseille, France
e-mail: miguel.figueira@lam.fr
2
Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Casilla 36-D, Santiago, Chile
3
Onsala Space Observatory, Sweden
Received:
1
March
2018
Accepted:
31
July
2018
Context. Little is known about how high-mass stars form. Around 30% of the young high-mass stars in the Galaxy are observed at the edges of ionized (H II) regions. Therefore these are places of choice to study the earliest stages of high-mass star formation, especially toward the most massive condensations. High spatial resolution observations in the millimeter range might reveal how these stars form and how they assemble their mass.
Aims. We want to study the fragmentation process down to the 0.01 pc scale in the most massive condensation (1700 M⊙) observed at the southwestern edge of the H ii region RCW 120 where the most massive Herschel cores (~124 M⊙ in average) could form high-mass stars.
Methods. Using ALMA 3 mm continuum observations toward the densest and most massive millimetric condensation (Condensation 1) of RCW 120, we used the getimages and getsources algorithms to extract the sources detected with ALMA and obtained their physical parameters. The fragmentation of the Herschel cores is discussed through their Jeans mass to understand the properties of these future stars.
Results. We extracted 18 fragments from the ALMA continuum observation at 3 mm toward eight cores detected with Herschel, whose mass and deconvolved size range from 2 M⊙ to 32 M⊙ and from 1.6 mpc to 28.8 mpc, respectively. The low degree of fragmen- tation observed regarding thermal Jeans fragmentation suggests that the observed fragmentation is inconsistent with ideal gravitational fragmentation and other ingredients such as turbulence or magnetic fields should be added to explain this inconsistency. Finally, the range of the mass of the fragments indicates that the densest condensation of RCW 120 is a favorable place for the formation of high-mass stars with the presence of a probable UCH ii region associated with the 27 M⊙ Fragment 1 of Core 2.
Key words: H II regions / ISM: bubbles / photon-dominated region
The getsources catalog together with the configuration file are only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/616/L10
© ESO 2018
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.