A Close Look at the Galactic Ecosystem: the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey

Abstract

AbstractEnergy and mass interchanges in the interstellar medium are driven by the life-cycle of stars. They appear in our own Galaxy over a broad range of scales, from point-like injection from stars to global input on the scale of spiral density waves. Understanding this Galactic Ecosystem requires observations of the different phases of the ISM over this large angular dynamic range. The Canadian Galactic Plane Survey (CGPS) is a project to combine radio, millimeter, and infrared surveys of the Galactic plane, providing arcminute-scale images of all major components of the interstellar medium over a large portion of the Galactic disk.