APEX survey of southern high mass star forming regions

TL;DR

This paper presents a survey of 40 IRAS sources in the southern sky using the APEX telescope to study high-mass star formation across various galactic environments, demonstrating successful source selection.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic survey of high-mass star-forming regions in the southern hemisphere using APEX, highlighting effective selection criteria and initial molecular line detections.

Findings

Sources are rich in molecular lines

Selection criteria are effective

Survey covers diverse galactocentric distances

Abstract

A systematic study of a large sample of sources, covering a wide range in galactocentric distances, masses and luminosities, is a fast and efficient way of obtaining a good overview of the different stages of high-mass star formation. With these goals in mind, we have started a survey of 40 color selected IRAS sources south of -20 degrees declination with the APEX telescope on Chajnantor, Chile. Our first APEX results already demonstrate that the selection criteria were successful, since some of the sources are very rich in molecular lines.