A panoramic view of star formation in Milky Way: recent results from Galactic plane FIR/sub-mm surveys
Creators
Description
The star formation process involves a continuous gas flow from galactic (kpc)
down to stellar (AU) scales. While targeted observations of single star forming
sources are needed to understand the steps of this process with increasing detail,
large unbiased Galactic plane surveys permit to reconstruct the map of star
forming sites across the Milky Way, considered as an unique star formation
engine. On the one hand, such surveys provide the community with a huge
number of candidate targets for future follow-up observations with state-of-the-art
telescope facilities, on the other hand they can provide reliable estimates of global
parameters, such as Galactic star formation efficiency and rate, through which it
is possible to establish comparisons with other galaxies. In this talk I will review
the main results of recent FIR/sub-mm continuum emission Galactic surveys,
with special attention to the Hi-GAL Herschel project, having the advantage (but
also the complication) of being a multi-wavelength survey covering the spectral
range in which the cold interstellar dust is expected to emit. The subsequent
VIALACTEA project represents an articulate effort to combine Hi-GAL with
other continuum and line surveys to refine the census of star forming clumps
in the Galactic plane, and to use it to describe the Milky Way as a whole.
Interpretation limitations imposed by the loss of detail with increasing distance
are also discussed.
Files
[ELIA]_ivmmws_upload.pdf
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