Molecular Mountains of the Milky Way

University Of Florida, Gainesville FL

Investigators

Abstract

The majority of stars are born in small clusters with other stars. These clusters are thus the basic building blocks of galaxies. These clusters start out as clouds of molecular gas, which turn into stars over millions of years. A number of fundamental questions about star cluster formation are still debated, including "exactly how long does it take"? and "how much of the gas in the clouds turned into clusters stars"? Based on their previous observations of the distribution of molecular clouds, they have argued for relatively long formation times. With this assumption of slow star formation, they will compare the types of molecules detected in our galaxy with the chemical relationships between the molecules. They will match their observations to find the correct chemical models. They have thousands of hours of previous observations which they will use to answer these questions. Also they will fully calibrate the data in a manner useful to other astronomers studying star formation. Because they have measurements of a large part of the center of our galaxy, they will relate the chemical structure on small scales with our galaxy's large scale structure. On the larger, galaxy-sized, scales there are also many open issues related to the basic question of how star move from small clusters, and in the process, destroying the molecular clouds which were the birthplaces of the stars. This research will be integrated into the teaching activities, including additions to the introductory astronomy course, Discover the Universe, he teaches each year to hundreds of students at the University of Florida. They will develop a new public outreach presentation based on this research, entitled "Molecular Mountains of the Milky Way", which will be presented in local schools and at the Starry Night public outreach event he helps organize at the Florida Museum of Natural History. In addition, this proposal will directly contribute towards the training of two Ph.D. students. One of the main research products will be the molecular line survey data, made publicly available to the astronomical community via the internet. During this proposal period the PI will organize an international conference on star formation in Florida, part of which will be devoted to the results from Galactic plane surveys that connect star formations to the structure of our Galaxy.