The Red MSX Source Survey: the Massive Young Stellar Population of our Galaxy

TL;DR

The RMS Survey provides the largest catalog of young massive stellar objects in our galaxy, revealing their distribution and formation environments through infrared observations.

Contribution

This work introduces a comprehensive, high-accuracy catalog of massive protostars and HII regions, enabling detailed statistical and environmental studies.

Findings

Massive stars form preferentially near the Galactic centre.

They are found in heavily reddened, high-density environments.

Formation occurs from the most massive cloud cores.

Abstract

We present the Red MSX Source (RMS) Survey, the largest statistically selected catalog of young massive protostars and HII regions to date. We outline the construction of the catalog using mid and near infrared color selection, as well as the detailed follow up work at other wavelengths, and at higher spatial resolution in the infrared. We show that within the adopted selection bounds we are more than 90% complete for the massive protostellar population, with a positional accuracy of the exciting source of better than 2 arcseconds. We briefly summarize some of the results that can be obtained from studying the properties of the objects in the catalog as a whole, and find evidence that the most massive stars form: (i) preferentially nearer the Galactic centre than the anti-centre; (ii) in the most heavily reddened environments, suggestive of high accretion rates; and (iii) from the most massive cloud cores.