High-resolution CARMA Observation of Molecular Gas in the North America and Pelican Nebulae

Creators: Kong, Shuo; Arce, Héctor G.; Carpenter, John M.; Bally, John; Ossenkopf-Okada, Volker; Sánchez-Monge, Álvaro; Sargent, Anneila I.; Suri, Sümeyye; McGehee, Peregrine; Lis, Dariusz C.; Klessen, Ralf S.; Mairs, Steve; Zucker, Catherine; Smith, Rowan J.; Nakamura, Fumitaka; Pillai, Thushara G. S.; Kauffmann, Jens; Zhang, Shaobo

Abstract

In this paper, we present the first results from a CARMA high-resolution ¹²CO(1-0), ¹³CO(1-0), and C¹⁸O(1-0) molecular line survey of the North America and Pelican (NAP) Nebulae. CARMA observations have been combined with single-dish data from the Purple Mountain 13.7 m telescope, to add short spacings and to produce high-dynamic-range images. We find that the molecular gas is predominantly shaped by the W80 H ii bubble, driven by an O star. Several bright rims noted in the observation are probably remnant molecular clouds, heated and stripped by the massive star. Matching these rims in molecular lines and optical images, we construct a model of the three-dimensional structure of the NAP complex. Two groups of molecular clumps/filaments are on the near side of the bubble: one is being pushed toward us, whereas the other is moving toward the bubble. Another group is on the far side of the bubble, and moving away. The young stellar objects in the Gulf region reside in three different clusters, each hosted by a cloud from one of the three molecular clump groups. Although all gas content in the NAP is impacted by feedback from the central O star, some regions show no signs of star formation, while other areas clearly exhibit star formation activity. Additional molecular gas being carved by feedback includes cometary structures in the Pelican Head region, and the boomerang features at the boundary of the Gulf region. The results show that the NAP complex is an ideal place for the study of feedback effects on star formation.

Additional Information

© 2021. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2020 September 28; revised 2021 March 2; accepted 2021 March 2; published 2021 April 23. We thank the anonymous referee for the thorough check of this paper, and the helpful comments. We thank Luisa Rebull for providing the Spitzer images. We thank Laurent Cambrésy for providing the extinction maps. S.K. acknowledges fruitful discussions with Min Fang and Serena Kim. S.S. acknowledges support from the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program, via the ERC Consolidator Grant CSF-648505. T.G.S.P. gratefully acknowledges support by the National Science Foundation under grant No. AST-2009842. S.K. and H.G.A. were (partially) funded by the National Science Foundation, award AST-1140063, which also provided partial support for the CARMA operations. The CARMA operations were also supported by the California Institute of Technology, the University of California–Berkeley, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Maryland College Park, and the University of Chicago. A.S.M. and V.O. carried out this research within the Collaborative Research Centre 956 (subprojects A6 and C1), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)—project ID 184018867. Part of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Contributions from J.K. are in part supported by the National Science Foundation under grant Number AST–1909097. S.Z. acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, through grant No. NSF 11803091. R.J.S. acknowledges funding from an STFC ERF (grant ST/N00485X/1). R.S.K. acknowledges support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) via the Collaborative Research Center (SFB 881, Project ID 138713538) "The Milky Way System" (subprojects A1, B1, B2 and B8), and from the Heidelberg cluster of excellence (EXC 2181-390900948) "STRUCTURES: A unifying approach to emergent phenomena in the physical world, mathematics, and complex data," funded by the German Excellence Strategy. He also expresses thanks for funding from the European Research Council, via the ERC Synergy Grant "ECOGAL—Understanding our Galactic ecosystem: From the disk of the Milky Way to the formation sites of stars and planets" (project ID 855130). This research made use of the data from the Milky Way Imaging Scroll Painting (MWISP) project, which is a multi-line survey in ¹²CO/¹³CO/C¹⁸O along the northern galactic plane, using the Purple Mountain Observatory Delingha 13.7 m telescope. The MWISP project is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China under grant No. 2017YFA0402700, and the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS under grant No. QYZDJ-SSW-SLH047. The Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II) was conducted by the California Institute of Technology with funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Geographic Society, the Sloan Foundation, the Samuel Oschin Foundation, and the Eastman Kodak Corporation. The Oschin Schmidt Telescope is operated by the California Institute of Technology, and the Palomar Observatory. Facilities: CARMA - Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy, DLH:13.7 m. - Software: Astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013), Numpy (van der Walt et al. 2011), APLpy (Robitaille & Bressert 2012), Matplotlib (Hunter 2007).

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