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Insights from Spitzer on massive star formation in the LMC

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

Rémy Indebetouw ,
Barbara A. Whitney ,
Marta Sewilo ,
Thomas Robitaille  and
Margaret Meixner
Rémy Indebetouw
Affiliation:
University of Virginia and National Radio Astronomy Observatory, P.O. Box 400325, Charlottesville, VA, 22904USA, email: [email protected]
Barbara A. Whitney
Affiliation:
Space Science Institute, Boulder, CO, USA
Marta Sewilo
Affiliation:
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA
Thomas Robitaille
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA
Margaret Meixner
Affiliation:
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA
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Abstract

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Spitzer's sensitive mid-IR photometric surveys of the Magellanic Clouds provide a relatively extinction-free census of star formation activity, and sub-parsec resolution permits the study of individual massive protostars and small clusters. Using the SAGE survey of the LMC, we identify over 1000 massive YSO candidates by their MIR colors. Analysis of their spectral energy distributions (SEDs) constrains the stellar content and evolutionary state, beginning to realize for the first time the unique potential of the Clouds to study an entire galaxy's population of individual protostars. We probe the physics underlying the Schmidt-Kennicutt scaling law by analyzing how it begins to break down at 10–100 pc spatial scales. MIR spectroscopic surveys currently underway like SAGE-SPEC will enable us to couple the circumprotostellar dust distribution (the evolutionary state reflected in the SED) with the physical state of the gas, dust and ice.

Keywords

surveysstars: formationISM: cloudsH ii regionsgalaxies: individual (LMC)Magellanic Clouds
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 4 , Symposium S256: The Magellanic System: Stars, Gas, and Galaxies , July 2008 , pp. 239 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2009

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