COMPLETE Survey Project Summary

Alyssa Goodman and a team of collaborators representing four countries propose to carry out the first ~10-pc scale Coordinated Molecular-Probe line Extinction Thermal Emission Survey of star forming regions. The goal of the COMPLETE Survey is to use a carefully chosen set of observing techniques to fully-sample the density, temperature, and velocity structure of three of the five large star-forming complexes to be observed in the NASA-sponsored SIRTF Legacy Survey "From Molecular Cores to Planet-forming Disks." The Legacy Survey, scheduled for 2003, will provide high-resolution infrared spectroscopy, and near- through far-infrared images of each of its ~10-pc-scale target complexes. COMPLETE will provide fully-sampled molecular spectral-line, extinction, and thermal emission maps for the same regions, at arcminute resolution or better. In addition, COMPLETE will include higher-resolution observations using the same suite of techniques for a large subset of the high-density cores evident at lower resolution. COMPLETE's molecular-line observations provide the essential kinematic context for interpreting the SIRTF Legacy data; and COMPLETE's extinction mapping is designed to offer the best possible column-density calibration for the SIRTF Legacy data. The proposal explains how a survey as large as the COMPLETE project has only become possible in the past few years, and would have been impossible just five years ago. What is unique about COMPLETE is its coordinated approach. Prior observations of the types proposed here abound, but they only rarely fully-sample any region, and no survey has ever covered a single (~10 pc) star-forming region fully with molecular line, extinction, and dust emission observations. The lack of an unbiased survey like COMPLETE has left star formation theories without statistical constraints on the temporal and spatial frequency of: inward motions, outflow motions, star-formation; cloud disruption; core formation and several other key parameters. All of the COMPLETE data will be made publicly available on the Internet, through an already-funded NVO program at CfA, within one year of its acquisition. We expect the statistical constraints offered by the COMPLETE Survey to be of great interest to the Milky Way, nearby-galaxy, and high-redshift star formation communities. The P.I. and Senior Collaborators on this proposal have the wide variety of expertise necessary to make a COMPLETE Survey a reality. They offer the proposal partly in their own interest, and partly as an altruistic gesture to their colleagues in star formation research. It is expected that at least twenty publications will result from the COMPLETE Survey proposed here within the grant period, but the project's long-term contribution to astronomy will no doubt stem in large part from the unique database it will create and maintain. Click Here for the full NASA Proposal

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Last modified on Monday, 22-Jan-2007 12:07:09 EST