Surveying the Giant HII Regions of the Milky Way with SOFIA: III. W49A

TL;DR

This study uses SOFIA mid-infrared imaging combined with multi-wavelength data to analyze the physical properties and evolutionary stages of sources within the giant HII region W49A, identifying new massive young stellar objects.

Contribution

First detailed mid-infrared imaging of W49A with SOFIA, identifying new MYSOs and analyzing the region's evolutionary state using multi-wavelength data.

Findings

22 likely MYSOs identified, including 10 new sources

Infrared emission from western sources remains undetected at 37μm

W49A's sub-regions show a small spread in evolutionary states

Abstract

We present our third set of results from our mid-infrared imaging survey of Milky Way Giant HII (GHII) regions with our detailed analysis of W49A, one of the most distant, yet most luminous, GHII regions in the Galaxy. We used the FORCAST instrument on the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) to obtain 20 and 37$\mu$m images of the entire ~5.0' x 3.5' infrared-emitting area of W49A at a spatial resolution of ~3". Utilizing these SOFIA data in conjunction with previous multi-wavelength observations from the near-infrared to radio, including Spitzer-IRAC and Herschel-PACS archival data, we investigate the physical nature of individual infrared sources and sub-components within W49A. For individual compact sources we used the multi-wavelength photometry data to construct spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and fit them with massive young stellar object (MYSO) SED models, and find 22 sources that are likely to be MYSOs. Ten new sources are identified for the first time in this work. Even at 37$\mu$m we are unable to detect infrared emission from the sources on the western side of the extremely extinguished ring of compact radio emission sources known as the Welch Ring. Utilizing multi-wavelength data, we derived luminosity-to-mass ratio and virial parameters of the extended radio sub-regions of W49A to estimate their relative ages and find that overall the sub-components of W49A have a very small spread in evolutionary state compared to our previously studied GHII regions.