The UWISH2 extended H2 source catalogue

TL;DR

The UWISH2 survey catalogues over 33,200 extended H2 features in the Galactic Plane, revealing star formation activity decline with distance from the Galactic Centre and identifying many previously unknown planetary nebulae and supernova remnants.

Contribution

This paper provides the first extensive catalog of extended H2 sources in the Galactic Plane, including new identifications of planetary nebulae and supernova remnants.

Findings

Star formation activity declines with distance from the Galactic Centre.

Many planetary nebulae and supernova remnants are detected with H2 emission.

The catalog includes over 33,200 H2 features associated with various astrophysical objects.

Abstract

We present the extended source catalogue for the UKIRT Widefield Infrared Survey for H2 (UWISH2). The survey is unbiased along the inner Galactic Plane from l \approx 357deg to l \approx 65deg and |b| < 1.5deg and covers 209 square degrees. A further 42.0 and 35.5 square degrees of high dust column density regions have been targeted in Cygnus and Auriga. We have identified 33200 individual extended H2 features. They have been classified to be associated with about 700 groups of jets and outflows, 284 individual (candidate) Planetary Nebulae, 30 Supernova Remnants and about 1300 Photo-Dissociation Regions. We find a clear decline of star formation activity (traced by H2 emission from jets and photo-dissociation regions) with increasing distance from the Galactic Centre. About 60% of the detected candidate Planetary Nebulae have no known counterpart and 25% of all Supernova Remnants have detectable H2 emission associated with them.