SOFIA/FORCAST Galactic Center Legacy Survey: Overview
Abstract
The Galactic Center contains some of the most extreme conditions for star formation in our Galaxy, as well as many other phenomena that are unique to this region. Given our relative proximity to the Galactic Center, we are able to study details of physical processes to a level that is simply not yet possible for more distant galaxies, yielding an otherwise inaccessible view of the nuclear region of a galaxy. We recently carried out a targeted imaging survey of mid-infrared bright portions of the Galactic Center at 25 and 37 μm using the FORCAST instrument on the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). This survey was one of the inaugural Legacy Programs from SOFIA cycle 7, observing a total area of 403 arcmin2 (2180 pc²), including the Sgr A, B, and C complexes. Here we present an overview of the survey strategy, observations, and data reduction as an accompaniment to the initial public release of the survey data. We discuss interesting regions and features within the data, including extended features near the circumnuclear disk, structures in the Arched Filaments and Sickle H II regions, and signs of embedded star formation in Sgr B2 and Sgr C. We also feature a handful of less well studied mid-infrared sources located between Sgr A and Sgr C that could be sites of relatively isolated star formation activity. Last, we discuss plans for subsequent publications and future data releases from the survey.
Additional Information
© 2020 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2020 January 5; revised 2020 February 28; accepted 2020 March 2; published 2020 May 5. We thank the anonymous referee for their comments that improved the quality of this paper. Additionally, we thank the USRA Science and Mission Ops teams and the entire SOFIA staff for making this survey possible. In particular, we thank Mike Gordon and Jim De Buizer, who helped to support our observations. Additionally, we thank the many people who have worked on FORCAST over the years, including but not limited to George Gull, Justin Schoenwald, Chuck Henderson, Joe Adams, and Andrew Helton. Financial support for this work was provided by NASA through award number NNA17BF53C issued by USRA. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant No. AST-1813765. A.T.B. would like to acknowledge the funding provided from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 726384). This work is based on observations made with the NASA/DLR Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). SOFIA science mission operations are conducted jointly by the Universities Space Research Association, Inc. (USRA) under NASA contract NAS2-97001, and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI) under DLR contract 50 OK 0901. Financial support for FORCAST was provided by NASA through award 8500-98-014 issued by USRA. This work made use of data products from the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. Additionally, this research made use of data products from the Midcourse Space Experiment. Processing of the data was funded by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization with additional support from NASA Office of Space Science. This research has also made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Finally, this research has also made use of the VizieR catalog access tool, CDS, Strasbourg, France. The original description of the VizieR service was published in Ochsenbein et al. (2000).Attached Files
Published - Hankins_2020_ApJ_894_55.pdf
Submitted - 2001.05487.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 101851
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20200311-105356721
- NNA17BF53C
- NASA
- AST-1813765
- NSF
- 726384
- European Research Council (ERC)
- NAS2-97001
- NASA
- 50 OK 0901
- Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)
- 8500-98-014
- NASA
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Created
-
2020-03-11Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Astronomy Department