The first Galaxy scale hunt for the youngest high-mass protostars

¹ Max-Planck-Institute for Radioastronomy, Germany
² OASU/LAB, Université Bordeaux, France
³ Laboratoire AIM Paris Saclay, France
⁴ European Southern Observatory
⁵ Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Chile
⁶ Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy, Germany
⁷ Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University, UK
⁸ École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France
⁹ Centro de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México
¹⁰ Departments of Astronomy and Physics, University of Florida, USA
¹¹ Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester, UK
¹² School of Physics & Astronomy, Cardiff University, UK
¹³ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Exeter, UK

e-mail: csengeri@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Abstract

The origin of massive stars is a fundamental open issue in modern astrophysics. Pre-ALMA interferometric studies reveal precursors to early B to late O type stars with collapsing envelopes of 15–20 M_⊙ on 1000–3000 AU size-scales. To search for more massive envelopes we selected the most massive nearby young clumps from the ATLASGAL survey to study their protostellar content with ALMA. Our first results using the intermediate scales revealed by the ALMA ACA array providing 3–5′′ angular resolution, corresponding to ∼0.05 − 0.1 pc size-scales, reveals a sample of compact objects. These massive, dense cores are on average two-times more massive than previous studies of similar types of objects. We expect that once the full survey is completed, it will provide a comprehensive view on the origin of the most massive stars.