Talk Details

Monday, March 25, 2013 - 11:00am

Simon Bihr:

"THOR - The HI/OH/Recombination line survey of the Milky Way"

Abstract. How do molecular clouds form from the diffuse atomic interstellar medium? To address this and further questions we are conducting the THOR survey, a galactic plane survey (15 < l < 60 dec and -1 < b < +1 dec) of the 21cm HI line, four OH lines, and 20 recombination lines as well as the continuum from 1 to 2 GHz at a spatial resolution of ~20''. We have been granted 100 hours at the VLA in C-configuration and the observations will take place this summer. To test the configuration, we did a pilot study around the active star forming region W43 in 2012. The data analysis is currently in progress. We combined these data with the VGPS survey (VLA Galactic plane survey - HI in D-configuration) and single-dish data from the Effelsberg telescope. This allows us to reconstruct all spatial scales down to 0.2-0.5pc. In my talk, I will introduce the THOR survey and present the status of our current work with the pilot study around W43.