Speaker
Description
Massive stars play a central role in shaping our Galaxy, but understanding how they form is still challenging. Their birth environments are deeply hidden inside dense clouds, they evolve quickly, and their strong feedback disrupts the surrounding gas. Millimetre spectral line observations offer a powerful way to study these early stages, revealing the physical and chemical conditions inside these obscured regions. However, the southern sky remains relatively unexplored at high spectral resolution, leaving a gap in the data needed to support future observing programs. With the Africa Millimetre Telescope (AMT) soon to become a major mm/submm facility on the continent, designing an effective spectral line observing strategy is an important step toward ensuring strong scientific output.
In this work, I present the first results from a pilot spectral line study aimed at building the foundation for an AMT-ready observational approach. The project targets compact H II region candidates identified in recent southern radio surveys.
Our early results show that dense-gas tracers paired with recombination line diagnostics are particularly effective for identifying ionized sources still embedded in molecular clouds. We also see evidence of chemical variation, velocity gradients, and shock signatures features commonly associated with the earliest phases of massive star formation. These insights directly feed into the development of an observational strategy tailored for the AMT, including guidance on spectral setups, mapping methods, and sensitivity requirements.
| Stream | Science or Engineering |
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