Extended Ionized Fe Objects in the UWIFE Survey

TL;DR

This paper presents the first large-scale survey of shocked gas in the Milky Way using the [Fe II] 1.644 um emission line, identifying 204 extended ionized Fe objects and analyzing their associations with various astrophysical sources.

Contribution

It provides the first imaging survey of the Milky Way in [Fe II] emission, cataloging 204 ionized Fe objects and exploring their properties and counterparts.

Findings

Detected 204 extended ionized Fe objects, mostly new discoveries.

Found associations with supernova remnants, young stellar objects, and other sources.

Provided measurements of sizes and fluxes for the identified objects.

Abstract

We explore systematically the shocked gas in the first Galactic quadrant of the Milky Way using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) Wide-field Infrared Survey for Fe+ (UWIFE). The UWIFE survey is the first imaging survey of the Milky Way in the [Fe II] 1.644 um emission line and covers the Galactic plane in the first Galactic quadrant (7 deg < l < 62 deg; |b| < 1.5 deg). We identify 204 extended ionized Fe objects (IFOs) using a combination of a manual and automatic search. Most of the IFOs are detected for the first time in the [Fe II] 1.644 um line. We present a catalog of the measured sizes and fluxes of the IFOs and searched for their counterparts by performing positional cross-matching with known sources. We found that IFOs are associated with supernova remnants (25), young stellar objects (100), H II regions (33), planetary nebulae (17), and luminous blue variables (4). The statistical and morphological properties are discussed for each of these.