On the Identification of High Mass Star Forming Regions using IRAS: Contamination by Low-Mass Protostars

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0504500

From: Tyler Bourke [view email]

Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 13:46:39 GMT   (48kb)

We present the results of a survey of a small sample (14) of low-mass
protostars (L_IR < 10^3 Lsun) for 6.7 GHz methanol maser emission performed
using the ATNF Parkes radio telescope. No new masers were discovered. We find
that the lower luminosity limit for maser emission is near 10^3 Lsun, by
comparison of the sources in our sample with previously detected methanol maser
sources. We examine the IRAS properties of our sample and compare them with
sources previously observed for methanol maser emission, almost all of which
satisfy the Wood & Churchwell criterion for selecting candidate UCHII regions.
We find that about half of our sample satisfy this criterion, and in addition
almost all of this subgroup have integrated fluxes between 25 and 60 microns
that are similar to sources with detectable methanol maser emission. By
identifying a number of low-mass protostars in this work and from the
literature that satisfy the Wood & Churchwell criterion for candidate UCHII
regions, we show conclusively for the first time that the fainter flux end of
their sample is contaminated by lower-mass non-ionizing sources, confirming the
suggestion by van der Walt and Ramesh & Sridharan.

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