Spitzer Space Telescope observations of the Carina Nebula: The steady march of feedback-driven star formation

TL;DR

This study uses Spitzer observations to analyze star formation in the Carina Nebula, revealing feedback-driven processes, transient pillars, and a consistent initial mass function over 3 million years.

Contribution

First Spitzer/IRAC imaging of the Carina Nebula providing a catalog of YSOs and insights into feedback-driven star formation and pillar dynamics.

Findings

Pillars are transient, feedback-driven structures.

Most YSOs are located outside pillar heads.

Star formation rate has been roughly constant over 3 million years.

Abstract

We report the first results of imaging the Carina Nebula with Spitzer/IRAC, providing a catalog of point sources and YSOs based on SED fits. We discuss several aspects of the extended emission, including dust pillars that result when a clumpy molecular cloud is shredded by massive star feedback. There are few "extended green objects" (EGOs) normally taken as signposts of outflow activity, and none of the HH jets detected optically are seen as EGOs. A population of "extended red objects" tends to be found around OB stars, some with clear bow-shocks. These are dusty shocks where stellar winds collide with flows off nearby clouds. Finally, the relative distributions of O stars and subclusters of YSOs as compared to dust pillars shows that while some YSOs are located within pillars, many more stars and YSOs reside just outside pillar heads. We suggest that pillars are transient phenomena, part of a continuous outwardly propagating wave of star formation driven by massive star feedback. As pillars are destroyed, they leave newly formed stars in their wake, which are then subsumed into the young OB association. Altogether, the current generation of YSOs shows no strong deviation from a normal IMF. The number of YSOs suggests a roughly constant star-formation rate over the past 3Myr, implying that star formation in pillars constitutes an important mechanism to construct unbound OB associations. Accelerated pillars may give birth to O-type stars that, after several Myr, could appear to have formed in isolation.