The youngest massive protostars in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

We demonstrate the unique capabilities of Herschel to study very young luminous extragalactic young stellar objects (YSOs) by analyzing a central strip of the Large Magellanic Cloud obtained through the HERITAGE Science Demonstration Program. We combine PACS 100 and 160, and SPIRE 250, 350, and 500 microns photometry with 2MASS (1.25-2.17 microns) and Spitzer IRAC and MIPS (3.6-70 microns) to construct complete spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of compact sources. From these, we identify 207 candidate embedded YSOs in the observed region, ~40% never-before identified. We discuss their position in far-infrared color-magnitude space, comparing with previously studied, spectroscopically confirmed YSOs and maser emission. All have red colors indicating massive cool envelopes and great youth. We analyze four example YSOs, determining their physical properties by fitting their SEDs with radiative transfer models. Fitting full SEDs including the Herschel data requires us to increase the size and mass of envelopes included in the models. This implies higher accretion rates (greater than or equal to 0.0001 M_sun/yr), in agreement with previous outflow studies of high-mass protostars. Our results show that Herschel provides reliable longwave SEDs of large samples of high-mass YSOs; discovers the youngest YSOs whose SEDs peak in Herschel bands; and constrains the physical properties and evolutionary stages of YSOs more precisely than was previously possible.

Main text: 4 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; Online material: 3 figures, 1 table; to appear in the A&A Herschel Special Issue

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Cited by in corpus (23)

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• The Detection of Hot Cores and Complex Organic Molecules in the Large Magellanic Cloud
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• A Panchromatic View OF NGC 602: Time-Resolved Star Formation with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes
• Integral Field Spectroscopy of Massive Young Stellar Objects in the N113 H\,{\sc ii} Region in the Large Magellanic Cloud
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• Cold Dust in Three Massive Evolved Stars in the LMC
• Kinetic temperature of massive star-forming molecular clumps measured with formaldehyde IV. The ALMA view of N113 and N159W in the LMC
• Complex Organic Molecules in Star-Forming Regions of the Magellanic Clouds
• A Spitzer Space Telescope survey of massive young stellar objects in the G333.2-0.4 giant molecular cloud
• ASTE observations in the 345 GHz window towards the HII region N113 of the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Herschel spectroscopy of Massive Young Stellar Objects in the Magellanic Clouds
• Low-mass pre--main-sequence stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• A discovery of young stellar objects in older clusters of the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Sulfur isotope ratios in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Structural and Dynamical Analysis of the Quiescent Molecular Ridge in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Herschel Observations of a Newly Discovered UX Ori Star in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• First detection of CF${}^{+}$ in the Large Magellanic Cloud