Studies of dense molecular cores in regions of massive star formation

Abstract

We surveyed 55 northern non-stellar H 2 O ma s ers in the CS line with the 20-m Onsala radio telescope and detected 47 CS cores associated probably with 50 masers. The CS emission for this sample is weaker on the average than for the similar southern sample studied by us earlier at SEST. Most of the detected cores were mapped in CS. The CS peaks were observed also in the C 34 S and in the CO lines. We present CS maps as well as CO, CS and, when available, C 34 S spectra for the 26 best studied cores. From the CS maps and optically thin C 34 S emission we derive the basic physical parameters of the cores: size, LTE mass, mean density, virial mass. Combining the present results with the previous SEST data we obtain statistical distributions of the core parameters. The CO brightness temperature distribution for most cores ranges from ~15 K to ~50 K with a peak at 20 - 30 K. The typical sizes of the cores are pc. The mean density lies in the range cm -3 which is much lower than densities needed for CS excitation from multitransitional analysis. The slope of the mass spectrum for is . The ratio of the IR luminosity of associated IRAS point sources to mass peaks at . The CS line widths are highly supersonic ( km s -1 ). We analyze the dependences of these parameters on galactocentric distance R . The mean density of the cores drops with increasing R in the interval kpc. It is consistent with an exponential law with a scale length of kpc. The IR luminosity to mass ratio changes probably in a similar way. The core size increases with R in accordance with the density decrease and constant mass. The comparison of the CS and C 34 S data shows almost no broadening of the CS lines due to optical depth effects. This can be probably explained by small scale clumpiness in the cores. The velocity difference between the CS cores and H 2 O masers is close to zero on the average with the standard deviation of km s -1 .