Galactic Plane Survey First Results

SH14_planeSurvey.pngSurveys of the Milky Way at various wavelengths have changed our view of star formation in our Galaxy considerably in recent years. In this paper, the authors give an overview of the Global View on Star formation in the Milky Way (GLOSTAR) survey, a new survey covering large parts (145 square degrees) of the northern Galactic plane using the Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in the frequency range 4−8 GHz, and the Effelsberg 100-m telescope. This provides for the first time a radio survey covering all angular scales down to 1.5 arcsecond, similar to complementary near- and mid-infrared galactic plane surveys. The authors outline the main survey goals and provide a detailed description of the observations and the data reduction strategy. 

In these observations, the radio continuum is covered in full polarization, as well as the 6.7 GHz methanol maser line, the 4.8 GHz formaldehyde line, and seven radio recombination lines. The observations were conducted in the most compact D configuration of the VLA and in the more extended B configuration. This yielded spatial resolutions of 18 arcsec and 1.5 arcsec for the two configurations, respectively. The authors also combined the D configuration images with the Effelsberg 100-m data to provide zero spacing information, and jointly imaged the D- and B-configuration data for optimal sensitivity of the intermediate spatial ranges. 

The authors show selected results for the first part of the survey, covering the range of 28° < l < 36° and |b|< 1°, including the full low-resolution continuum image, examples of high-resolution images of selected sources, and the first results from the spectral line data.

Image Caption: GLOSTAR 10 GHz image of the Galactic Plane

Publication: Andreas Brunthaler (Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie) et al., A global view on star formation: The GLOSTAR Galactic plane survey. I. Overview and first results for the Galactic longitude range 28° < l < 36°, Astronomy & Astrophysics, 651, A85 (July 2021)

NRAO Press Release: New Study Reveals Previously Unseen Star Formation

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