W43 HERO

W43 HERO (Hera/EmiR Observations) is an international collaboration led by Frédérique Motte (AIM/CEA/France) and Peter Schilke (Uni.Cologne/Germany). The program aims at investigating the distribution of the mid-density molecular gas in W43, one of the most active star forming regions in the Milky Way (Motte et al. 2003).

W43 is located at the connection of the spiral arms and bar where circular and elliptic orbits intersect and molecular clouds are expected to collide. At a distance of ~6 kpc and a mass of ~10⁷ solar masses, W43 has all the prerequisites to be studied in detail. The interest of the W43 region and its molecular clouds has already been proven in projects by Schuller et al. 2009 [ATLASGAL], Molinari et al. 2010 and Bally et al. 2010 [Hi-GAL]).

The aim of the W43 HERO Program is two-fold:  study the dynamics of the molecular gas over a square degree region centered on W43 with unprecedented spectral resolution (~0.1 km/s) using the ¹³CO (2-1) and C¹⁸O (2-1) line transitions,  and investigate the physical and chemical conditions of the densest clouds at the center of the complex using the spectral signatures of molecular high-density tracers.

The results of the CO observations are described in Carlhoff et al. (2013); Nguyen Luong et al. (2013) discuss the high-density part of the project.

The official data repository of W43 HERO is at IRAM.

Please feel free to contact Frédérique Motte (frederique.motte@cea.fr) or Peter Schilke (schilke@ph1.uni-koeln.de) in case you have any questions about the data in the repository. Acknowledgements are appreciated if the repository data are used in publications or public presentations.

Last updated: August 28, 2013