Galactic HII Regions and Structure in the Milky Way
Seminar by Trey Wenger (U. Wisc), 9 October 2023, 16h CEST (14h UT)
The present-day structure of the Milky Way imposes strict constraints on models of galactic formation and chemodynamical evolution. HII regions, the zones of ionized gas that surround recently-formed massive stars, are the classic tracer of structure in galaxies. Over the past decade, the HII Region Discovery Surveys have nearly tripled the number of known high-mass star forming regions in the Milky Way by detecting cm-wavelength radio recombination line emission toward infrared-identified HII region candidates. I will summarize the latest census of Galactic HII regions and highlight recent and on-going investigations into the Milky Way’s morphological and chemical structure as probed by these nebulae. In particular, I will motivate the need for IRAM 30-m observations of the molecular gas associated with Galactic HII regions in order to resolve an outstanding mystery in galactic chemodynamical evolution.
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