ALMA Observations of Giant Molecular Clouds in M33. III. Spatially Resolved Features of the Star formation Inactive Million-solar-mass Cloud
Abstract
We present 12CO (J = 2-1), 13CO (J = 2-1), and C18O (J = 2-1) observations toward GMC-8, one of the most massive giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in M33 using ALMA with an angular resolution of 0"44 × 0"27 (∼2 pc × 1 pc). The earlier studies revealed that its high-mass star formation is inactive in spite of a sufficient molecular reservoir with a total mass of ∼106 M⊙. The high-angular resolution data enable us to resolve this peculiar source down to a molecular clump scale. One of the GMC's remarkable features is that a round-shaped gas structure (the "Main cloud") extends over the ∼50 pc scale, which is quite different from the other two active star-forming GMCs dominated by remarkable filaments/shells obtained by our series of studies in M33. The fraction of the relatively dense gas traced by the 13CO data with respect to the total molecular mass is only ∼2%, suggesting that their spatial structure and the density are not well developed to reach an active star formation. The CO velocity analysis shows that the GMC is composed of a single component as a whole, but we found some local velocity fluctuations in the Main cloud and extra blueshifted components at the outer regions. Comparing the CO with previously published large-scale H I data, we suggest that an external atomic gas flow supplied a sufficient amount of material to grow the GMC up to ∼106 M⊙.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- May 2021
- DOI:
- 10.3847/1538-4357/abeb65
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2103.01610
- Bibcode:
- 2021ApJ...912...66K
- Keywords:
-
- Giant molecular clouds;
- Triangulum Galaxy;
- Star formation;
- Interstellar medium;
- Local Group;
- Molecular gas;
- Interstellar atomic gas;
- 653;
- 1712;
- 1569;
- 847;
- 929;
- 1073;
- 833;
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies
- E-Print:
- 16 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal