The Bolocam Millimeter Wavelength Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

Drs. John Bally and Jason Glenn (University of Colorado at Boulder) will carry out a program to complete and analyze a 1 mm continuum survey of a large portion of the Galactic plane using Bolocam on the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory. The primary goals of the project are to tabulate the locations, sizes, masses, columns densities, and shapes of dense core clouds as functions of Galactic location and environment and to use these data to constrain the modes of cloud and star formation in these regions. The relationship between cluster size and cloud core mass will also be determined through infrared and visual wavelength observations of young stars and star clusters associated with nearest cores. As a part of this research effort, calibrated images and catalogs of dense core clouds and their properties will be made publicly available. The results of this research will provide thousands of objects for follow-up observations on larger facilities coming on-line in the future such as the Atacama Large Millimeter Array. This survey will also contribute to several Ph.D. dissertations and will provide projects for undergraduate research. The images from this survey will be disseminated on the internet and also at the Fiske Planetarium in Boulder, Colorado and the Gates Planetarium in Denver, Colorado.