Abstract

Contributed Talk - Splinter ISM

Wednesday, 23 September 2020, 14:05   (virtual room F)

The SOFIA legacy program FEEDBACK

C. Guevara, N. Schneider, A. Tielens, and the FEEDBACK consortium
Universität zu Köln, University of Maryland, Leiden University

Massive stars play a key role in the evolution of the interstellar medium (ISM) in galaxies. They "stir" the ISM through various processes such as ionization, stellar winds, radiation pressure, and finally supernova explosions. This mechanical and radiative feedback of massive stars on their environment regulates the physical conditions of the ISM, sets its emission characteristics, and ultimately governs the star formation activity through negative (molecular cloud destruction) and positive (cloud compression) feedback. Understanding the physical processes that regulate the impact of massive stars on their environment is thus a key question in modern astrophysics and a major theme of the Stratospheric Observatory for Far-Infrared astronomy (SOFIA). We present here the first results of the SOFIA legacy program FEEDBACK. The project has been granted 96 hours observing time and started in 2019 in order to map 11 prominent Galactic star-forming regions the [CII] 158μm line and the [OI] 63μm line (observed in parallel), using the upGREAT heterodyne instrument. It is intended to study the interaction of massive stars with their environment in a sample of sources that span a range in stellar characteristics from single OB stars, to small groups of O stars, to rich young stellar clusters, to mini starbursts. With these observations, it is possible to quantify the relationship between star formation activity and energy injection and the negative and positive feedback processes involved, and link that to other measures of activity on scales of individual massive stars, of small stellar groups, and of star clusters.