Astron. Astrophys. 357, 637-650 (2000)

6. Conclusions

We have imaged the submm emission towards five high mass star formation regions using SCUBA on the JCMT, and modelled the resulting spectral energy distributions and radial profiles as emission from spherically symmetric dust shells.

• The images show strong emission peaks towards known UCHII positions in all cases. In G10.47 and possibly G12.21 there are further dust emission peaks without known UCHII .

• Some sources show more strongly centrally peaked emission than others. The peaked sources are those previously identified from spectral line observations as having hot molecular cores. Sources with hot cores can be identified much faster using SCUBA submm images than from spectral line observations.

• The spectral energy distributions and radial brightness profiles can be modelled by dust distributions with a density profile, plus the addition of a compact, high column density core in three out of five sources (G10.47, G12.21 and G31.41). The sources which required compact cores to fit the dust emission are the peaked, hot molecular core sources.

• The inner boundary of the dust shells appears to be set by something other than dust sublimation, as low temperatures of only a few hundred kelvin at the inner boundary are required to fit the SEDs. The physical mechanism which sets the inner boundary is unclear.

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 2000

Online publication: June 5, 2000
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