A Spitzer Legacy Survey of the Cygnus-X Complex
Résumé
We propose a Spitzer Legacy Program to perform a uniform, unbiased survey of the Cygnus-X complex (~6x6 deg area) with IRAC and MIPS. This region contains the richest known concentration of massive protostars and the largest OB associations in the nearest 2 kpc. With this survey we can 1) analyze the evolution of high mass protostars with a large and statistically robust sample at a single distance, 2) study the role of clustering in high mass star formation, 3) study low mass star formation in a massive molecular cloud complex dominated by the energetics of ~100 O-stars, 4) assess what fraction of all young low mass stars in the nearest 2 kpc are forming in this one massive complex, and 5) provide an unbiased survey of the region and produce a legacy data set which can be used in conjunction with future studies of this region (e.g., with Herschel and JWST). The Cygnus-X survey will be an important step in constructing one of Spitzer's greatest legacies: surveying with high sensitivity and spatial resolution a representative sample of galactic star forming regions, from Bok globules to complexes containing millions of solar masses of gas and hundreds of O-stars.