The Millimeter Astronomy Legacy Team 90 GHz Survey (MALT90) and ALMA

TL;DR

The MALT90 survey maps dense molecular clumps in the Galactic plane to guide ALMA observations, providing valuable data on star formation and chemical trends in our galaxy.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive database of dense molecular clumps, serving as a pathfinder for ALMA and enabling new insights into star formation processes.

Findings

Comparison of galactic and extragalactic star formation relations

Identification of chemical trends in dense clumps

Distribution analysis of high-mass star formation in the Milky Way

Abstract

ALMA will revolutionize our understanding of star formation within our galaxy, but before we can use ALMA we need to know where to look. The Millimeter Astronomy Legacy Team 90 GHz (MALT90) Survey is a large international project to map the molecular line emission of over 2,000 dense clumps in the Galactic plane. MALT90 serves as a pathfinder for ALMA, providing a large public database of dense molecular clumps associated with high-mass star formation. In this proceedings, we describe the survey parameters and share early science highlights from the survey, including (1) a comparison between galactic and extragalactic star formation relations, (2) chemical trends in MALT90 clumps, (3) the distribution of high-mass star formation in the Milky Way, and (4) a discussion of the Brick, the target of successful ALMA Cycle 0 and Cycle 1 proposals.