The SOFIA Massive (SOMA) Star Formation Survey. I. Overview and First Results
James M. De Buizer, Mengyao Liu, Jonathan C. Tan, Yichen Zhang, Maria, T. Beltran, Ralph Shuping, Jan E. Staff, Kei E. I. Tanaka, Barbara Whitney

TL;DR
This paper presents initial results from the SOMA survey, imaging massive protostars in infrared wavelengths, confirming outflow models and deriving protostellar properties to inform massive star formation theories.
Contribution
First comprehensive infrared imaging and analysis of massive protostars using the SOMA survey, validating core accretion models and deriving protostellar parameters.
Findings
Extended emission along outflows observed
Protostellar masses estimated to be 10-50 solar masses
Accretion rates around 10^{-4} to 10^{-3} solar masses per year
Abstract
We present an overview and first results of the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy Massive (SOMA) Star Formation Survey, which is using the FORCAST instrument to image massive protostars from --. These wavelengths trace thermal emission from warm dust, which in Core Accretion models mainly emerges from the inner regions of protostellar outflow cavities. Dust in dense core envelopes also imprints characteristic extinction patterns at these wavelengths, causing intensity peaks to shift along the outflow axis and profiles to become more symmetric at longer wavelengths. We present observational results for the first eight protostars in the survey, i.e., multiwavelength images, including some ancillary ground-based MIR observations and archival {\it{Spitzer}} and {\it{Herschel}} data. These images generally show extended MIR/FIR emission along…
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