The Astrophysical Journal, 600:269–278, 2004 January 1

# 2004. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.

SUBMILLIMETER CONTINUUM OBSERVATIONS OF NGC 7538

Göran Sandell1 and Albrecht Sievers2
Received 2003 May 7; accepted 2003 September 5

ABSTRACT
We present high-resolution millimeter and submillimeter maps (1.3 mm and 850, 800, 450, and 350
m) of the
molecular cloud southeast of NGC 7538, obtained on the IRAM 30 m telescope at Pico Veleta, Spain and the 15 m
James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. These maps show filamentary dust ridges extending from
and connecting to the three major activity centers (IRS 1–3, NGC 7538 S, and IRS 9) in this high-mass star–forming
cloud. In addition to the three already known star formation centers, we also find a fainter extended submillimeter
source near the 20
m source IRS 4, at the boundary of the optical H ii region. Our high spatial resolution images
resolve the young, hypercompact H ii region IRS 1 and show that it coincides with a compact (<1000 ) elliptical dust
source with a mass of
70 M. It is surrounded by a cluster of submillimeter sources, none of which have near- or
mid-IR counterparts. Three of the submillimeter sources are associated with H2O masers, suggesting that protostars
or young stars have formed in these cloud cores. We find IRS 9 to be an extended elliptical source with a size of
13 00  6 00 at a position angle of 80, with a second, fainter but more extended source about 2000 south of it. The
mass of the IRS 9 submillimeter source is 150 M, while the southern source has a mass of  90 M. The third
activity center, NGC 7538 S, is 8000 south of IRS 1. Here we find a strong, elliptical submillimeter source of
12 00  7 00 , with a position angle of 58 . This source coincides with OH and H2O masers and a faint VLA 6 cm source,
but it shows no near- or mid-infrared emission. We find NGC 7538 S to have all the characteristics of a Class 0
source; i.e., it is a high-mass protostar. It is cold, Td 35 K, has a disklike geometry, drives a very young outflow,
and is extremely massive, M  400 M. Yet it has a luminosity of only 104 L.
Subject headings: circumstellar matter — ISM: clouds — ISM: individual (NGC 7538) — stars: formation —
stars: pre–main-sequence — submillimeter

1. INTRODUCTION the known H ii regions or infrared sources, suggesting that there

The molecular cloud southeast of NGC 7538 H ii region is a
well-known site of active, ongoing, high-mass star formation.
The three high-luminosity infrared sources IRS 1–3 (Wynn-
Williams, Becklin, & Neugebauer 1974a; Werner et al. 1979)
are located at the boundary of the H ii region (Fig. 1) and may
have been triggered by the expanding H ii region. They are all
associated with young, ultracompact H ii regions. IRS 1, the
most luminous of the three H ii regions, L ¼ 1:3  105 L,
drives a high-velocity ionized and molecular outflow and
excites a large variety of molecular masers: OH, H2O, CH3OH,
and even NH3 and H2CO masers (Campbell 1984; Scoville et al.
1986; Johnston et al. 1989; Kameya et al. 1989, 1990; Gaume
et al. 1995). We adopt the distance 2.8 kpc (Crampton,
Georgelin, & Georgelin 1978), which has been used in most
studies, but note that distance estimates as low as 2.2 kpc have
been reported (Moreno & Chavarrı́a-K. 1986).
Farther away from the H ii region are two other major activity
centers, IRS 9 and NGC 7538 S (Figs. 1 and 2), both of which
show outflow and maser activity but have very weak free-free
radio emission (Werner et al. 1979; Kameya et al. 1989, 1990;
Davis et al. 1998). The cold, dense far-infrared source NGC
7538 S (L  1:3  104 L) coincides with OH and H2O masers
but does not have a near- or mid-IR counterpart (Thronson &
Harper 1979). These sources are in an earlier evolutionary stage
than IRS 1–3. The H2O maser survey by Kameya et al. (1990)
show several new H2O masers that do not coincide with any of
1
SOFIA-USRA, NASA Ames Research Center, MS 144-2, Moffett Field,
CA 94035; gsandell@mail.arc.nasa.gov.
2
Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM), Avenida Divina
Pastora 7, Nucleao Central, 18012 Granada, Spain.
269
are lower luminosity protostars deeply hidden in the dense
molecular cloud.
In this paper we present the first high-resolution millimeter
and submillimeter observations of the NGC 7538 molecular
cloud, giving us an unprecedented picture of the large-scale
structure of the high-density molecular gas and how it relates
to the ongoing star formation.
2. OBSERVATIONS AND DATA REDUCTION
2.1. UKT 14 Observations
The single-element bolometer UKT 14 was used for photo-
metry and mapping at 1.1 mm and 800, 450, and 350
m on the
15 m James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT)3 on Mauna Kea,
Hawaii, on the nights of 1990 November 4–6 and 1991
November 2. An additional 800
m map was taken during the
late morning on 1991 June 14.
UKT 14 is a sensitive, 3He-cooled, one-channel bolometer
with a filter wheel and a variable iris that permits diffraction-
limited observations at wavelengths from 1.1 mm to 350
m.
For longer wavelengths, the optics overilluminate the primary.
The instrument is described in more detail by Duncan et al.
(1990). Details of photometry observing techniques and
reduction are discussed by Sandell (1994) and on-the-fly
mapping with UKT 14 by Sandell (2000). All on-the-fly
3
The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope is operated on a joint basis between
the United Kingdom Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council
(PPARC), the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research
(ZWO), the Canadian National Research Council (CNRC), and the University
of Hawaii (UH).
270 SANDELL & SIEVERS
Fig. 1.—Contour map of 450
m (HPBW ¼ 8 00 ) overlaid on a narrowband
2.12
m gray-scale image (Davis et al. 1998). The dust emission borders the
large H ii region NGC 7538 in the northwest, peaking strongly on the
hypercompact H ii region IRS 1 (star). Equally strong emission is seen toward
the high-mass protostellar core NGC 7538 S 8000 south of IRS 1. A third,
fainter peak is centered on IRS 9, 20 to the east. IRS 9 shows a jet in H2 and
is associated with a large reflection nebulosity. The 450
m contours are
logarithmic. The step between contours is 4  100:2ð n1Þ Jy beam1, where
n ¼ 1; 2; 3; : : : .
maps with UKT 14 were taken by scanning in azimuth while
chopping in azimuth.
The sky conditions in 1990 November were reasonably
stable, with a precipitable water vapor (PWV) at zenith of
1.5–2 mm, although it dropped to 1 mm for a few hours. The
weather conditions in 1991 June were very similar and stable
(PWV ¼ 1:5 mm), while the water vapor level was high in
1991 November (PWV ¼ 2 3 mm), and we only got one map
Fig. 2.—High-resolution CLEAN image of the NGC 7538 molecular cloud
at 850
m, plotted in gray scale and overlaid with linear contours to show the
filamentary structure of the dust emission. The positions of the infrared
sources IRS 1–3, IRS 4, and IRS 9 are marked by stars, while the position of
the OH and H2O masers associated with NGC 7538 S is marked by a triangle.
The contours start at 0.5 Jy beam1, with a step of the same amount. Above
4 Jy beam1, the emission is only shown by the linear gray scale.
Vol. 600
at 1.1 mm and one at 800
m. The pointing was checked on
IRS 1 at 1.1 mm before and after each map, but because IRS 1
is asymmetric, the pointing is only good to within a few
arcseconds for the UKT 14 data.
At 1.1 mm we observed the whole field in one go, i.e., a
region of 5 0  4 0 in size. One map was obtained with a
sampling rate of 600 s1 and a chop throw of 3600 and had an rms
noise level of 0.33 Jy beam1. The second map was taken with
a 4800 chop and a sampling rate of 500 s1 and had an rms noise
level of 0.5 Jy beam1. At 800
m, two maps were obtained.
One map covered the whole field, and one covered only the
western part of the complex. For these maps the sampling rate
was 400 s1 and chop throws 4000 and 4200 , with rms noise levels
of 0.5 and 0.7 Jy beam1, respectively.
At 450 and 350
m, we made smaller maps around the three
major activity centers in NGC 7538. For these maps the
sampling rate was 300 s1 and the chop throw 3000 . At 450
m the
submaps overlapped, and we got two maps of both IRS 1 and
NGC 7538 S but only one map of the IRS 9 field, which was of
poor quality and therefore rejected during the data analysis. At
350
m we only got one usable map of the IRS 1 field.
Calibration was derived from observations of Uranus, Mars,
and the secondary calibrators K 3-50 and NGC 7538 IRS 1
(Sandell 1994).
The initial data reduction was done with the NOD2 software
package (Haslam 1974). The calibrated dual-beam maps were
then transferred to the dual-beam maximum entropy reduction
package, DBMEM (Richer 1992), assuming elliptical, two-
component Gaussian beams: a narrow main beam and an
extended, low-amplitude error lobe (Sandell 2000). The maps
were calibrated in Jy beam1 from beam maps of Uranus, which
were observed and reduced in the same way. The measured
half-power beamwidths (HPBWs) were 18B5 at 1.1 mm, 13B5 at
800
m, 7B9 at 450
m, and 7B4 at 350
m. The error lobe
contribution was estimated to be 5% at 1.1 mm, 10% at 800
m,
22% at 450
m, and 45% at 350
m. The calibration uncertainty
for the final DBMEM-reduced maps is estimated to be on the
order of 15% at 1.1 mm, 20% at 800
m, 30% at 450
m, and
50% at 350
m.
2.2. SCUBA Observations
The Submillimeter Common-User Bolometer Array
(SCUBA; Holland et al. 1999) was used on JCMT on
1997 December 18 in excellent submillimeter sky conditions
(PWV  1 mm). SCUBA has 37 bolometers in the long-
(850
m) and 91 in the short- (450
m) wavelength array,
separated by approximately two beamwidths in a hexagonal
pattern. Both arrays can be used simultaneously. For the
observations of NGC 7538, we used the 850 and 450
m filter
combination in traditional scan-map mode, i.e., with continuous
scanning in azimuth at a scan rate of 3200 s1 while chopping in
azimuth with a chop throw of 6000 . We took two maps of roughly
8 0  8 0 , with a pointing check on the blazar BL Lac before and
after the maps. The pointing drift was almost negligible ( 200 ),
and we removed it in the postprocessing of the data. The HPBW
of SCUBA in scan-map mode with linear regridding was
measured to be 8B0 at 450
m and 14B5 at 850
m from a
scan map of Uranus observed an hour before the maps of
NGC 7538. This is very close to values typically measured for
jiggle maps, which indicates that the pointing was very stable
and that we had no refraction noise. The maps were reduced in a
standard way using the SURF reduction package (Jenness &
Lightfoot 1998). The two maps were co-added and regridded
No. 1, 2004 NGC 7538
onto equatorial coordinates using linear interpolation onto a
100 grid. The rms level measured in emission-free areas of the
maps was found to be 0.13 Jy beam1 for the 850
m map and
0.9 Jy beam1 at 450
m. The calibration accuracy is estimated
to be better than 10% at 850
m and about 20% at 450
m.
2.3. IRAM Observations
The 1.3 mm dust continuum emission was mapped with the
30 m IRAM telescope on Pico Veleta, Spain, on 1994 April 27
and 29 with the MPIf R seven-channel bolometer array (Kreysa
1992). The MPIf R bolometer array is centered on a frequency
of 236 GHz (1.27 mm). The HPBW was measured on Mars and
found to be 1200 . All the mapping was done with on-the-fly
mapping, i.e., scanning in azimuth while chopping in azimuth.
The scanning velocity was 400 s1. All maps were taken with a
chop throw of 3200 . The atmospheric opacity was monitored
using ‘‘skydips.’’ On April 27, the zenith optical depth was
fairly constant and 0.3, increasing to 0.5 toward the end of the
shift. On April 29, the zenith optical depth stayed constant in the
range 0.14–0.16.
The data reduction was done with MOPSI (Zylka 1998).4
Before gridding, the dual beam maps were extinction-corrected,
calibrated, despiked, baseline-subtracted, and restored to
single-beam maps using the EKH algorithm (Emerson, Klein,
& Haslam 1979). No significant pointing offsets were found
between the individual submaps. The submaps were co-added,
with weighting inversely proportional to the variance, in order
to obtain the best signal-to-noise ratio. We applied a minor
pointing correction (
 ¼ 2B5,
 ¼ þ3B4) to the final map
by aligning IRS 9 with the Owens Valley Radio Observatory
(OVRO) position given by van der Tak et al. (2000) before
converting it to FITS and exporting it to MIRIAD for further
analysis.
The rms noise of the 1.3 mm map is 32 mJy beam1. The
calibration uncertainty is estimated to be 10%.
2.4. Image Deconvolution and Source Extraction
In order to better compare the SCUBA 850 and 450
m maps
with the 1.3 mm IRAM map and the DBMEM-restored UKT 14
maps, we transferred our data into the MIRIAD image analysis
package (Sault, Teuben, & Wright 1995). We then formed
subimages of the fields around IRS 1, IRS 9, NGC 7538 S, and
IRS 8, which we cleaned with the MIRIAD task CLEAN. For
the SCUBA data, we fitted two-component elliptical Gaussians
to the Uranus map obtained the same time and found the beam
profile to be well represented by a two-component Gaussian
with a main beam of 14B8  14B2 broadened in the scan
direction (or P:A: ¼ 25 for our NGC 7538 maps) and a 3000
error beam, with relative amplitudes of 0.975 and 0.025 for the
main beam and error beam, respectively. At 450
m the main
beam was 8B2  7B8, with an error beam of 3500 and relative
amplitudes of 0.933 and 0.067 for the main beam and the error
beam, respectively.
For the IRAM map we assumed a symmetric main beam of
1200 and a 12000 error beam, with relative amplitudes of 0.9 and
0.1 for the main beam and error beam, respectively. This is
consistent with typical beam profiles measured for the seven-
channel bolometer array.
We restored the 850
m data with both a 1200 and a 1400 beam.
For a strong source like IRS 1 a 1200 beam gave a marginal
4
Available at http://www.iram.es/IRAMES/otherDocuments/manuals/
Datared/pockcoo.ps.
271
improvement in spatial resolution over 1400 , but still not suffi-
cient to resolve the source. At 1.3 mm we restored all subfields
with a 1200 beam, while all 450
m maps were restored with an
800 beam.
The UKT 14 maps and the CLEANed SCUBA and 1.3 mm
images were used to derive accurate positions, source sizes,
and integrated intensities for all the compact sources that we
could visually identify. We used the MIRIAD task IMFIT to
fit elliptical Gaussians with a two-component Gaussian fit:
one compact component for the source and an extended
Gaussian for the surrounding cloud. Even though the sur-
rounding cloud may not be well described by a single
Gaussian, this approach works quite well if one limits the
region over which the fitting is done, so that the cloud
emission can be approximated by a Gaussian. The results from
these fits are given in Tables 1 and 2.
3. RESULTS
3.1. Large-Scale Structure
Figure 1 shows the 450
m SCUBA image overlaid as a
contour map on a narrowband 2.12
m H2 map (Davis et al.
1998). The three major activity centers, IRS 1–3, IRS 9, and
NGC 7538 S (Werner et al. 1979; Thronson & Harper 1979), are
all associated with strong, extended dust emission and con-
nected to each other by narrower dust filaments. The filamentary
structure is seen more clearly on the high signal-to-noise ratio
850
m map (Fig. 2). In the northwest, the continuum emission
follows the boundary of the optical H ii (Fig. 1), which Davis et
al. (1998) show to be largely void of gas. We see a faint,
somewhat extended dust condensation southwest of IRS 4
(Fig. 2), but the strongest dust emission is centered on the
hypercompact H ii region IRS 1. Surrounding IRS 1 is a cluster
of submillimeter sources (Table 1), none of which are associ-
ated with near- or mid-infrared emission, suggesting that they
are in a younger evolutionary state than IRS 1. IRS 9 and NGC
7538 S appear more isolated, although there are at least two
molecular outflows near IRS 9 (Davis et al. 1998), suggesting
that there is more than one young star in the vicinity of IRS 9.
The filamentary cloud structure of the dust emission is
similar to what Zheng et al. (2001) see in NH3. In the dust
continuum the filaments show up even more clearly than in
NH3, which has a more lumpy appearance. The young pro-
tostellar sources IRS 1, IRS 9, and NGC 7538 S all coincide
with spatially resolved dust continuum sources, while NH3 is
weak or absent toward IRS 1 and IRS 9. Toward IRS 1, NH3 is
seen in absorption against the continuum, confirming that
IRS 1 is surrounded by a cold gas. No NH3 emission is seen
toward IRS 9. This is presumably due to the chemistry of NH3,
which often tends to be weak or absent toward young proto-
stellar sources. A notable exception, however, is the strong
NH3 emission toward the H2O and OH maser source NGC
7538 S, which has the strongest submillimeter continuum
emission of all the sources in NGC 7538. As we show below,
this source is a very young protostar, which may not yet have
had time to interact with the surrounding molecular cloud. The
deep search for H2O masers by Kameya et al. (1990) shows
that all three major protostellar sources (IRS 1, IRS 9, and
NGC 7538 S) are associated with H2O masers, but they found
in addition four new masers, which do not coincide with any
known radio or IR sources. As we show below, all these
masers coincide with dust continuum sources, suggesting that
these are all excited by young protostellar sources of relatively
low luminosity.
272 SANDELL & SIEVERS Vol. 600
TABLE 1
The IRS 1 Submillimeter Cluster

Offseta kb a  b P.A. S
Submillimeter Source (arcsec) (
m) (arcsec) (deg) (Jy)

IRS 1 ................................ 0, +0 450S 11.5  7.6 +55 90

450 15.8  7.6 +89 123
350 11.7  7.9 +74 180
SMM 1............................. +10, 1 450S 9.3  7.1 +5 53
450 9.4  7.2 +5 31
350 9.3  7.2 ... 91
SMM 2............................. +1, 12 450S 13.9  7.1 +44 43
450 17.5  7.2 +55 50
350 17.7  8.8 +65 116
SMM 3............................. 12, 25 450S 6.7  8.3 ... 15
450 5.6  5.3 ... 10
350 7.2  6.6 ... 23
SMM 4............................. 13, 12 450S 5.1  4.3 ... 12
450 10.7  7.3 ... 13.5
350 8.3  7.2 ... 23
SMM 5c............................ 14, +1 450S 9  5 +104 36
450 10  7 +100 35
350 10  7 +95 50
a
Positions are measured relative to IRS 1 ( ¼ 23h 13m 45F35,  ¼ 61 28 0 10B5;
J2000.0) and are averages of three maps. The uncertainty in position is 200 .
b
450S denotes the 450
m SCUBA filter.
c
Part of an extended ridge. Size, position, and flux density are highly uncertain
because of the difficulty in estimating the underlying emission.

3.2. The NGC 7538 IRS 1–3 Region
NGC 7538 IRS 1–3 were found in a 2.2 and 20
m survey
of NGC 7538 (Wynn-Williams et al. 1974a), southeast of the
optical H ii region. All three IR sources were found to coincide
with a group of compact radio sources first discovered by
Martin (1973). IRS 1 dominates at FIR wavelengths, with a
luminosity of 2  105 L (Werner et al. 1979). At radio
wavelengths IRS 1 is an ultracompact or hypercompact H ii
region, which at high angular resolution is resolved into two
radio lobes separated by  0B2 (Turner & Matthews 1984;
Campbell 1984; Gaume et al. 1995). The hypercompact H ii
region is optically invisible and shows deep silicate absorption
at 9.7
m (Hackwell, Grasdalen, & Gehrz 1982), corresponding
to a foreground extinction of 60 mag. Campbell (1984)
suggested that the two radio lobes were part of a north-south
bipolar ionized outflow collimated by a disk. This was con-
firmed by Gaume et al. (1995), who imaged IRS 1 in the H66

TABLE 2
Positions, Deconvolved Sizes and Integrated Flux Densities of ‘‘Isolated’’ Submillimeter Sources

ka a  b Sint
Submillimeter Source (
m)  (J2000.0)  (J2000.0) (arcsec) P.A. (deg) (Jy)

IRS 9 .................................... 1300 23 14 01.68 +61 27 21.8 12.2  7.6 82 0.88  0.09
1100 23 14 01.85 +61 27 22.0 17.8  16.8 ... 1.0  0.15
850S 23 14 01.96 +61 27 20.5 13.7  5.2 82 3.9  0.6
800 23 14 01.81 +61 27 23.7 11.5  9.5 78 3.4  0.7
450S 23 14 01.89 +61 27 20.5 13.0  5.9 77 38.8  9.6
450 23 14 01.73 +61 27 21.6 8.8  8.2 ... 28.3  8.5
IRS 9 S ................................ 1300 23 14 00.50 +61 26 57.3 20.0  13.1 62 0.44  0.04
850S 23 14 00.70 +61 26 54.9 20.0  13.3 +86 1.6  0.3
450S 23 14 00.72 +61 26 56.2 19.9  13.2 35 22.5  5.0
NGC 7538S.......................... 1300 23 13 44.46 +61 26 49.8 14.1  7.1 +56 4.35  0.48
1100 23 13 44.53 +61 26 49.7 21.7  14.3 +51 8.2  1.2
850S 23 13 44.51 +61 26 48.7 13.5  5.8 +58 16.6  1.7
800 23 13 44.68 +61 26 51.4 14.3  8.7 +54 21.1  4.2
450S 23 13 44.55 +61 26 49.4 12.9  6.5 +58 127.1  26
450 23 13 44.57 +61 26 50.3 14.3  7.7 +52 151.1  45
350 23 13 44.81 +61 26 49.4 11.4  9.4 +84 146.8  60
IRS 4 SW............................. 1300 23 13 30.24 +61 29 04.9 10  5 +80 0.32  0.08
850S 23 13 30.42 +61 29 02.6 10  4 +32 1.6  0.2
450S 23 13 30.23 +61 29 03.6 10.2  4 74 8.5  2.1

Note.—Units of right ascension are hours, minutes, and seconds, and units of declination are degrees, arcminutes,
and arcseconds.
a
‘‘S’’ denotes SCUBA filters.
No. 1, 2004 NGC 7538 273

recombination line. Their observations showed extremely

wide line profiles, 250 km s1, indicating substantial mass
motion of the ionized gas. IRS 1 is also known to drive a bipolar
molecular outflow (Campbell & Thompson 1984; Scoville et al.
1986; Kameya et al. 1989) with a position angle of 145 and a
total extent of 2 pc. IRS 1 is associated with a large variety of
molecular masers: OH, H2CO, H2O, CH3OH, NH3, and 15NH3
(Johnston et al. 1989). Several studies have suggested that IRS
1 is surrounded by a massive rotating disk or ring collimating
the molecular and the ionized outflow (Scoville et al. 1986;
Kawabe et al. 1992; Gaume et al. 1995; Minier, Booth, &
Conway 1998), although the evidence for a rotating disk is
rather marginal. The free-free emission for IRS 1 (Campbell
1984; Akabane et al. 1992) corresponds to about a zero-age
main-sequence (ZAMS) spectral type B0, if the H ii region is
excited by a single star. The observed near-infrared lumi-
nosity, LNIR ¼ 1:5  105 L, corrected for extinction (Willner
1976; Hackwell et al. 1982), is about 4 times higher than one
would expect from a ZAMS O9. This consistent with IRS 1
being extremely young.
IRS 2 is more extended (1000 ) and less obscured than IRS 1
(AV 14 mag) and has a luminosity of  3:8  104 L
(Campbell & Thompson 1984). IRS 3 is faint at radio wave-
lengths and less luminous than IRS 1 and IRS 2.
In the millimeter and submillimeter, we find IRS 1 to be lo-
cated in a large cloud core extending  9000 in the east-west
direction and  6000 from northeast to southwest, with an
equivalent diameter of 7000 –7500 . The dust emission peaks on Fig. 3.—High-resolution CLEAN and DBMEM subimages of the IRS 1
IRS 1, which is consistent with millimeter aperture synthesis cloud core. The high-fidelity SCUBA 450
m contour map (top left) is overlaid
observations (Scoville et al. 1986; Pratap, Batrla, & Snyder on a 2.12
m H2 image (Davis et al. 1998) in gray scale. The ultracompact
1989; Kawabe et al. 1992; van der Tak et al. 2000). However, H ii regions IRS 1–3 are marked by stars and labeled. The triangles
mark H2O masers from Kameya et al. (1990). All other maps are plotted as gray
while the dust emission in the aperture synthesis observations is scale and overlaid with contours. The contours are logarithmic. For the long-
unresolved or marginally extended because of the free-free wavelength data (1.3 mm–800
m), the step between contours is a  100:2ð n1Þ ,
emission, our single-dish 450 and 350
m observations resolve and for the 450 and 350
m data it is a  100:15ð n1Þ , where a is the lowest
IRS 1 into an elliptical source of 11B6  7B6 at a position angle contour level and n is an integer. The lowest contour is 50 mJy beam1 (1.3 mm;
1200 ), 0.8 Jy beam1 (850
m; 1200 ), 0.175 Jy beam1 (800
m; 400 ), 4 Jy beam1
(P.A.) of 80 (Fig. 3). The exact size and P.A. of the submil- (450
m SCUBA; 700 ), 0.5 Jy beam1 (450
m UKT 14; 3B5), and 0.75 Jy beam1
limeter emission surrounding IRS 1 is difficult to determine, (350
m UKT 14; 3B5), where the filter and HPBW are given in
because the dust emission is severely blended by several nearby parentheses. The DBMEM-reduced UKT 14 data have been smoothed by a
sources. cosmetic beam; it is not the real beam size (see text).
At 450 and 350
m, we resolve the IRS 1 cloud core into five
additional sources in the vicinity of IRS 1 (Table 1; Fig. 3). which they attribute to molecular cloud material shocked by
These submillimeter sources are also seen as discrete CS con- the stellar wind from the O star powering IRS 2. We would
densations in the CS J ¼ 2 ! 1 map by Kawabe et al. (1992), therefore expect to see dust emission from the expanding dust
who interpreted the CS emission knots as part of a rotating disk shell surrounding IRS 2. While our data certainly lend support
surrounding IRS 1. However, since the CS condensations seen to such an interpretation, the strong emission from IRS 1
by Kawabe et al. (1992) all have submillimeter counterparts, makes it impossible to separate the much fainter emission
it is far more likely that they are protostellar cores that are in from the envelope of IRS 2.
the process of forming new stars. Three of the submillimeter
sources, SMM 1, SMM 4, and SMM 5, have nearby H2O 3.3. The IRS 9 Region
masers, maser components 1, 8, and 11 in the notation of IRS 9 is another bright, pointlike IR source  20 east of
Kameya et al. (1990), suggesting that they have embedded IRS 1 that illuminates an extended reflection nebula. IRS 9
protostars. The protostellar core SMM 5 and the H2O maser 8 coincides with an H2O maser (Kameya et al. 1990) and a
are close to IRS 3. Although Kameya et al. (1990) suggested very faint VLA5 source (O. Kameya 2003, private commu-
that the maser might be associated with IRS 3, we find it much nication) and drives a high-velocity molecular outflow, al-
more likely that it is due to a younger object embedded in the though there appear to be more than one high-velocity
dense SMM 5 molecular core. outflow in the vicinity of IRS 9 (Kameya et al. 1989;
Figure 3, especially the deep, high-resolution SCUBA im- Mitchell, Maillard, & Hasegawa 1991; Davis et al. 1998).
age, shows extended dust emission in the direction of IRS 2, The bolometric luminosity is 2  104 L (Werner et al.
but whether the H ii region is directly associated with this dust 1979; Thronson & Harper 1979).
emission is difficult to assess. High-resolution near-IR imag-
ing by Bloomer et al. (1998) in the 1.64
m line of [Fe ii], the 5
The Very Large Array (VLA) is a facility of the National Radio
2.12 and 2.25
m lines of vibrationally excited H2, the 2.17
m Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The NRAO is a facility of the National
Br H recombination line, and the 3.29
m dust feature show Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated
a shell-like distribution of these lines around the H ii region, Universities, Inc.
274 SANDELL & SIEVERS Vol. 600

The submillimeter position of IRS 9 (Table 2) agrees within

errors with the near-IR position and is also in good agreement
with the 3 mm OVRO position (van der Tak et al. 2000).
However, while van der Tak et al. (2000) see an unresolved
point source at 3 mm, we resolve IRS 9 in our single-dish
observations as an elliptical source of 14 00  7 00 at a P.A. of
80, embedded in a larger extended cloud core extending to
the south from IRS 9 (Fig. 4). We find a faint, more extended
source  2000 south of IRS 9. Contrary to the case of IRS 1, the
position at near-IR wavelengths agrees with those at longer
wavelengths, even though the star is as heavily obscured as
IRS 1. Tielens et al. (1991) derive a visual extinction of 75 mag
from observations of the CO absorption band at 4.67
m.
3.4. NGC 7538 S
Werner et al. (1979) found a faint 100
m source toward the
OH and H2O maser source NGC 7538 S (Johnston, Sloanaker,
& Bologna 1973; Wynn-Williams, Werner, & Wilson 1974b),
 8000 south of IRS 1. They found no detectable emission at
10 and 20
m toward the maser source and estimated a far-
infrared luminosity of 1:3  104 L. Thronson & Harper
(1979) detected the source at 57
m with a 3000 beam, and by
combining their data with the 100
m observations of Werner
et al. (1979), they derived a dust temperature Td ¼ 40 K and a Fig. 4.—High-resolution CLEAN and DBMEM subimages of the IRS 9
luminosity of 1:6  104 L.6 The maser source is associated region. The 450
m SCUBA image has been restored to 1200 resolution and is
with a compact CO outflow (Kameya et al. 1989; Davis et al. superposed on a 2.12
m H2 image (Davis et al. 1998) in gray scale. All other
1998) oriented roughly southeast to northwest. The detailed maps are plotted as gray scale and overlaid with contours. IRS 9 is marked by a
triangle and IRS 10 by a star symbol. The H2 jet emanating from the vicinity of
H2O maser survey by (Kameya et al. 1990 and O. Kameya IRS 9 is highlighted with a dashed line. The position of the southern source,
2003, private communication) shows a cluster of maser IRS 9 S, is marked on the 450
m image, but it can be clearly seen on both the
components coinciding with the previously determined H2O 800 and 850
m images. The contours are linear for the 450
m image, starting
and OH positions (Forster et al. 1978; Wynn-Williams et al. at 3 Jy beam1 with a step size of 2.5–12.5 Jy beam1. The last three contours
1974b; Argon, Reid, & Menten 2000), as well as with a faint are at 15, 20, and 25 Jy beam1. The 1.3 mm–800
m maps are plotted with
logarithmic contours. The step between contours is a  100:2ð n1Þ , where a is
6 cm VLA source (O. Kameya 2003, private communication). the lowest contour level. The lowest contour is 50 mJy beam1 (1.3 mm; 1200 ),
Some additional maser spots farther out are likely to trace the 0.3 Jy beam1 (850
m; 1400 ), and 75 mJy beam1 (800
m; 400 ).
high-velocity outflow.
We find NGC 7538 S to be the strongest submillimeter
continuum source in NGC 7538 (Tables 1 and 2). We resolve the
submillimeter emission into an elliptical source of 14 00  7 00
P:A: ¼ 58  3 coinciding with the OH and H2O masers. We
note, however, that the maser and the 6 cm VLA positions are
offset by  400 to the northeast (Fig. 5) from the 850
m posi-
tion (Table 2). Since this exceeds our astrometric accuracy
( 200 ), this suggests that there may be more than one protostar
hidden within the extended submillimeter source. The source is
connected to the IRS 1 submillimeter cluster with a bridge of
dust emission. The high-resolution 450
m image, however,
shows that there is a gap, or very little dust emission, 1500 –2000
north of NGC 7538 S. The submillimeter source itself is lo-
cated in and approximately aligned with a long, narrow filament
extending to the southwest. Two additional H2O masers, G and
H (Kameya et al. 1990), are located in this filament. To the east
of NGC 7538 S, we see an extended region of relatively bright
dust emission, which fades off before it connects with the IRS 9
cloud core (Figs. 2 and 5). The strongest ammonia peak in the
map by Zheng et al. (2001) also coincides with the submi- Fig. 5.—High-resolution CLEAN and DBMEM subimages of the high-mass
llimeter source NGC 7538 S. Here Zheng et al. (2001) find the protostar, NGC 7538 S. As in previous figures. the 450
m SCUBA contour
map is overlaid on a 2.12
m narrowband H2 image. All other maps are plotted
NH3 emission to be optically thick, with a temperature of 25 K. as gray scale and overlaid with contours. The position of the faint 6 cm VLA
source coinciding with an OH maser and a cluster of H2O maser spots is
4. ANALYSIS marked by a square. The two outmost H2O maser spots from the protostar,
For thermal dust emission the observed flux density, S, believed to trace the outflow, are marked by triangles. The H2O masers E and F
(Kameya et al. 1990) are marked by triangles and labeled on the 450
m
at the frequency  depends on the dust temperature, Td , the SCUBA image. The contours are logarithmic, with a step size of a  100:2ð n1Þ ,
where a is the lowest contour level. The lowest contour is 100 mJy beam1
6
We have corrected both luminosities to the distance 2.8 kpc used (1.3 mm; 1200 ), 0.5 Jy beam1 (850
m; 1400 ), 75 mJy beam1 (800
m; 400 ),
throughout this paper. 4 Jy beam1 (450
m; 800 ).
No. 1, 2004
solid angle of the source, s , and the optical depth of the
dust,  ; i.e.,
S ¼ s B ðTd Þð1  e Þ;
where the dust optical depth can be expressed as a power law
of frequency, i.e.,
 

 ¼ o : ð2Þ
o
Here o is the dust optical depth at frequency o, and  is the
dust emissivity index. In the millimeter and submillimeter
regime the dust emission is largely optically thin, and we can
therefore assume that s is constant and independent of fre-
quency. If we further assume that the bulk of the dust can be
characterized by a single dust temperature, Td, we can now
determine the dust temperature and the dust emissivity by
doing a least-squares fit to equation (1). The assumption of a
single dust temperature is clearly unrealistic, since high-mass
star–forming cores are heated from the inside by a central
luminous source. It is not, however, as bad as it may appear
from spherical radiative transfer models (see, e.g., Mueller
et al. 2002), because most of the dust surrounding these young
high-mass stars is in highly flattened structures, which results
in lower dust temperatures than predicted from a spherical
model (Lefèvre, Daniel, & Bergeat 1983). At least in one case,
NGC 7538 S, the surrounding dust envelope has been shown
to be dominated by a massive rotating accretion disk (Sandell,
Wright, & Forster 2003), while OVRO observations of both
IRS 1 and IRS 9 (van der Tak et al. 2000) show unresolved
dust emission at 3 mm, presumably due to optically thick dust
near the young high-mass stars. An optically thick inner dust
cocoon or dust torus would also reduce the dust temperature
farther away from the central source. However, even if we
take the radiative transfer calculations by Mueller et al. (2002)
at face value, we find that the dust temperature for a 104 L
central source varies by less than a factor of 2, i.e., from 50
to 30 K at radii of 100 and 1000 , respectively. This suggest that
the uncertainty in dust mass due to our assumption of iso-
thermal dust will be less than a factor of 2, which is similar to
or smaller than the uncertainty in dust mass opacity.
Once the dust emissivity and the dust temperature are
known, one can compute the total mass of a submillimeter
source from
 3þ   tometry with a 6000 chop will pick up at least 0.5 Jy beam1 in
2 1200
Mtot ¼ 1:88  10 S e0:048=Td  1 d 2 ;
 beam1, possibly more, to both data sets. For these two sources
where d is the distance in kiloparsecs, S is the total flux at
frequency , Td and  are the fitted dust temperature and
-index, and Mtot is given in units of M. In this equation we
have adopted the ‘‘Hildebrand’’ mass opacity, o , defined at
250
m (1200 GHz), i.e., 1200 GHz ¼ 0:1 cm2 g1 (Hildebrand
1983), and a gas-to-dust ratio of 100. Mueller et al. (2002) find
that the tabulated dust mass opacities (OH5) by Ossenkopf &
Henning (1994) for coagulated dust grains with ice mantles
give the best agreement for the sources they modeled. For
 ¼ 1, the Hildebrand opacity at 850
m is a factor of 1.6 higher
than the OH5 opacity, while it is about half the OH5 opacity for
 ¼ 2.
The dust optical depth and the dust temperature are strongly
coupled in the millimeter and submillimeter wavelength regime
NGC 7538 275
(Sandell 2000), and one therefore needs far-infrared data to
determine the average dust temperature. All far-infrared
measurements of NGC 7538 are obtained with beam sizes on
ð1Þ the order of 10 (Werner et al. 1979; Thronson & Harper 1979),
while the submillimeter sources are at most 1000 in size and
surrounded by strong dust emission from the cloud cores in
which they are embedded. We therefore need to correct for the
contribution of extended emission before we can combine the
broad-beam far-infrared data with our high spatial resolution
millimeter and submillimeter data. However, since we have
accurate, well-calibrated maps in the millimeter and submilli-
meter regime, it is relatively straightforward to estimate the
contribution of the extended emission if the source is isolated,
like NGC 7538 S (see Fig. 5). For a crowded region like the IRS
1 submillimeter cluster, it is virtually impossible to separate the
extended emission from that of the embedded sources, espe-
cially since we do not even resolve the individual sources at
longer wavelengths (Fig. 3). Since we are only interested in
emission from cold dust, which completely dominates the flux
density at long wavelengths, we restrict the far-infrared data to
wavelengths longer than 60
m.
Another uncertainty in broadband continuum data comes
from ‘‘pseudocontinuum’’ due to spectral line emission in the
bandpass. The strongest molecular lines, like the rotational CO
transitions, are generally widespread and largely cancelled out
by the chopping scheme used, but compact emission from
outflows or molecules excited in the high-density cores will
contribute a nonnegligible continuum level to the true dust
continuum. This was investigated by Sandell (2000) for NGC
6334 using narrowband heterodyne photometry in a frequency
band free of line emission and centered at 352 GHz; for a de-
tailed discussion of these observations, see Sandell (2000). We
have data for both IRS 1 and NGC 7538 S, obtained on the same
night (1991 March 30) as the NGC 6334 data. We obtained two
sets of photometry with a 6000 azimuth chop throw of both
sources. The measured flux densities in a 13B3 beam were
12:9  1:0 and 11:0  0:6 Jy beam1 for IRS 1 and NGC
7538 S, respectively. Since this narrowband photometry is
centered on the SCUBA 850
m band, we only need to correct
for the difference in beamwidth, which is easy, since we have a
CLEANed version of the SCUBA map. If we restore the
CLEANed 850
m map with a 13B3 beam, we find peak flux
densities of 16.2 and 13.2 Jy beam1 for IRS 1 and NGC
7538 S, respectively, which would indicate a spectral line
contamination of more than 20%. However, inspection of the
SCUBA 850
m map (see, e.g., Fig. 2), indicates that pho-
the reference beam, and we therefore have to add 0.5 Jy
ð3Þ
we therefore find that spectral line contamination is 10%–
15%, and derived masses should therefore be reduced by this
amount. However, since this is much less than the uncertainty in
dust mass opacity and errors resulting from the assumption of
isothermal dust, which result in a combined mass uncertainty of
at least a factor of 3, we have not corrected for line contami-
nation. A rigorous treatment of broadband continuum emission
of high-mass star–forming cores will, however, need to correct
for excess emission due to spectral line contamination.
4.1. The IRS 1 Region
For IRS 1 we can get some constraints on the average dust
temperature and dust emissivity by comparing our millimeter
and submillimeter data with published far-infrared photome-
try. We did aperture photometry of IRS 1 on the CLEANed
276 SANDELL & SIEVERS
1.3 mm and 850 and 450
m maps, with apertures matching
the beam sizes of the far-infrared data. Unfortunately, these do
not match each other at the different wavelengths, and since the
IRS 1 cluster has a diameter larger than 6000 , even relatively
small changes in the aperture size have a relatively large effect
on the observed flux density. Werner et al. (1979) give flux
densities at 100
m for a 5500 beam, while Thronson & Harper
(1979) quote photometry at 149 and 87
m with beam sizes of
6000 and 5000 , respectively. We correct for free-free emission
from IRS 1 and IRS 2 by assuming a combined flux density of
2 Jy at 100 GHz (Akabane et al. 1992), although the contri-
bution from free-free emission is only of the order of 10% at
1.3 mm and negligible at shorter wavelengths. Isothermal
least-squares fits on different permutations of these data sets
give a dust temperature in the range of 45–55 K, while 
is  1.2–1.3. We would expect the IRS 1 submillimeter source
to be hotter than the other submillimeter sources, because it is
directly illuminated by the ultracompact H ii region. Disks
surrounding young stars typically have dust emissivities of the
order of 1, which seems appropriate for IRS 1 as well. If we
adopt  ¼ 1, we find that the temperature of the submillimeter
source must be less than 80 K; otherwise, IRS 1 becomes too
luminous. With a dust temperature of 75 K, the luminosity of
the IRS 1 submillimeter source is  9  104 L, and the dust
mass 70 M.
The masses of the five additional submillimeter sources in
the IRS 1 core are more uncertain. These sources are likely to
be colder than IRS 1, and based on the results above a dust
temperature of 40 K appears plausible. The dust emissivity is
also likely to be somewhat higher. If we adopt  ¼ 1:5, the
least massive source, SMM 4 has a mass of 30 M, while
SMM 1, the most massive one, has a mass of 125 M.
4.2. IRS 9 and NGC 7538 S
IRS 9 and NGC 7538 S have similar far-infrared luminosi-
ties, but the spectral energy distribution (SED) for IRS 9 is
rather broad (Thronson & Harper 1979) and similar to that of
IRS 1, indicating that more than one source contributes to the
observed far-infrared flux densities. By contrast, the SED of
NGC 7538 S is quite narrow in the far-infrared, suggesting that
a single source (or dust in a narrow temperature range)
dominates the far-infrared emission, which agrees well with our
submillimeter data. For IRS 9 we find that the surrounding
cloud emission completely dominates at long wavelengths:
about 4 times the flux of IRS 9 in a 6000 aperture, while at 450
m
the flux ratio is only about 3. IRS 9 therefore has a steeper SED
than the surrounding cloud core and IRS 9 S, which gets
included in a 5000 –6000 aperture. Fitting our millimeter and
submillimeter data with the Thronson & Harper (1979) data
gives a temperature of 30 K and a dust emissivity of 1.6,
while the Werner et al. (1979) 100
m data suggest a dust
temperature closer to 40 K and a slightly lower dust emissivity,
 ¼ 1:4. If we assume that half the flux density in the far-
infrared is due to IRS 9, our least-squares fit gives  ¼ 2 and
Td 35 40 K, with 35 K corresponding to the data from
Thronson & Harper (1979). This corresponds to a mass for the
IRS 9 disk of 140–170 M and a luminosity of 104 L. If we
adopt a dust temperature Td ¼ 30 K for IRS 9 S, we get the same
dust emissivity, i.e.,  ¼ 2, which gives a mass of 90 M.
For NGC 7538 S we have only used the 100
m data from
Werner et al. (1979). Here we find that the ratio of integrated
(D ¼ 55 00 ) to compact emission is roughly constant from 1.3
mm to 450
m, or 2.1, 2.5, and 2.2 at 1.3 mm, 850
m, and
450
m, respectively. It therefore seems safe to assume that at
Vol. 600
most half of the measured 100
m flux density is due to NGC
7538 S. Our least-squares fit gives Td 35 K and  1:6 and
suggests that the dust emission is starting to get optically thick
at 850
m, with a dust optical depth of  0.1. The mass of
NGC 7538 S is
400 M, with a far-infrared luminosity of
no more than 104 L. This is by far the most massive source in
the whole NGC 7538 molecular cloud. The least-squares fits
for both IRS 9 and NGC 7538 S are shown in Figure 6.
5. DISCUSSION
5.1. NGC 7538 S Is a Class 0 Object: A High-Mass Protostar!
NGC 7538 S has all the characteristics of a Class 0 object
(André, Ward-Thompson, & Barsony 1993). It has a dense,
cold, elliptical core with a mass of  400 M and a radius
of 14,000 AU. The virial mass, assuming an r1.5 density
distribution and a line width of 4.5 km s1 (Kalenskii et al.
2000), is only 220 M, suggesting that the core is likely to be
gravitationally unstable and most likely in a state of collapse. A
somewhat steeper radial density distribution, such as r1.8,
which Mueller et al. (2002) found for their high-mass core
sample, would reduce the virial mass by 13% (MacLaren,
Richardson, & Wolfendale 1988). The submillimeter source
coincides with a faint 6 cm VLA source and OH and H2O
masers and drives a compact molecular outflow. It has no near-
or mid-IR counterpart, but it has been detected at 57
m
(Thronson & Harper 1979). The presence of masers confirm
that there is a central hot protostar embedded within the massive
envelope. The bolometric luminosity is quite modest, Lbol 
104 L. A large fraction of this luminosity is radiated in the
submillimeter. The ratio of submillimeter (i.e., radiation
shortward of 900 GHz) to bolometric luminosity Lsubmm =Lbol

1:4  102 , which is well above the limit (>0:5  102 )
required by André et al. (1993) in their definition of observa-
tional properties of a Class 0 object.
NGC 7538 S appears very similar to NGC 6334 I(N), which
Sandell (2000) classified as a high-mass Class 0 protostar.
Both protostars are surrounded by cold envelopes with masses
of  400 M. Both excite OH and H2O masers and drive
molecular outflows, which indicate that they have already
formed at least one protostar within their massive envelopes.
Fig. 6.—Graybody least-squares fits to IRS 9 and NGC 7538 S. The fits
were made using only the 1.3 mm IRAM data and the 850 and 450
m
SCUBA data (triangles), and using far-infrared data (also triangles) to con-
strain the fit (see text). Fits including UKT 14 data ( filled squares) give similar
results. IRS 9 has a steeper SED than the cold protostar NGC 7538 S.
No. 1, 2004
NGC 6334 I(N) appears to be surrounded by a larger cloud
core (D ¼ 1:2 pc) than NGC 7538 S, which is located in a
crossing point between two filaments and appears more
compact. If we integrate over the brightest part of the filament
surrounding NGC 7538 S, i.e., an area equivalent to a 6000
circle (0.8 pc), we find that the surrounding cloud has a mass
of 750 M, corresponding to an average gas density of 4 
104 cm3. Here we have assumed a dust temperature of 30 K,
i.e., that the dust is roughly thermalized with the gas, which
Zheng et al. (2001) found to have a temperature of 25 K.
Therefore, even the surrounding cloud is not that different from
NGC 6334 I(N); both protostellar cores have formed in mas-
sive, high-density clouds that are likely to form more than one
high-mass protostar. Sandell (2000) found several nearby
submillimeter condensations in the NGC 6334 I(N) cloud core,
indicating that the cloud core is in the process of forming more
than one star. The cloud surrounding NGC 7538 S is more
filamentary than the cloud core surrounding NGC 6334 I(N),
although the large NGC 6334 molecular cloud shows some
remarkable dust filaments. The discovery of an H2O maser in
the dust filament 2500 southwest of NGC 7538 S (Kameya et al.
1990) and several vibrationally excited H2 knots 2000 –3000 east
of it indicates that the cloud filament is gravitationally unstable
and in the process of forming more stars.
A follow-up study by Sandell et al. (2003) shows that NGC
7538 S is surrounded by a massive rotating disk, with the
center of symmetry coinciding with the OH and H2O masers
and the 6 cm VLA source. They find that the protostar drives a
compact bipolar outflow, which is centered on the protostar
and perpendicular to the rotating disk. The outflow is young. It
has a dynamical time of <10,000 yr. With the assumption that
the rotating disk is gravitationally bound, they derive an
enclosed mass of  40 M within a 500 radius. Sandell et al.
(2003) also detected the dust disk in 3.4 mm continuum, with
an extent similar to that we see at millimeter and submillimeter
wavelengths, but they derive a smaller mass, 100 M.
5.2. The IRS 1 Submillimeter Cluster
The IRS 1 cloud core is larger and warmer than the cloud
cores surrounding IRS 9 and NGC 7538 S. The core has an
approximate diameter of 7000 (1.2 pc), with a dust temperature
of  40 K. The high dust temperature is partly due to the
proximity of the NGC 7538 H ii region and partly because the
core is heated by the three young, ultracompact H ii regions
IRS 1–3. If we assume a dust emissivity of  ¼ 1:5, we find a
mass of
1000 M from our 450
m observations. This mass
estimate is very similar to what Mueller et al. (2002) derive
from their detailed modeling, 750 M. The core radius,  3500 ,
which we define as the equivalent radius at which the
continuum emission has dropped to 10% of its peak value, is
also very similar to the radius Mueller et al. (2002) derive
from their model,  4000 , even though the definitions differ.
Mueller et al. (2002) define their core radius as the radius
inside which the density exceeds a gas density of 104 cm3.
Using the average velocity dispersion from van der Tak et al.
(2000) and the radial density distribution derived by Mueller
et al. (2002), we derive a virial mass of 1400 M, showing
that the cloud core is roughly in virial equilibrium.
However, our high spatial resolution 450 and 350
m
observations (Fig. 3; x 3.2) show that the IRS 1 cloud core is
breaking up into a number of discrete sources. We identify at
least six submillimeter sources in the cloud core (Table 1), if
we include the disk surrounding IRS 1. These submillimeter
NGC 7538 277
sources have masses in the range 30–125 M. Four of them
are associated with H2O masers, but none of the H2O masers
are well centered on the submillimeter source that they are
associated with (Fig. 3). Since H2O masers always coincide
with the low- and intermediate-mass stars that excite them, the
discrepancy in position between the H2O maser and the sub-
millimeter source suggests that most of these sources form or
have formed more than one star. Higher spatial resolution
observations would probably further resolve some of them
into additional components. All of the submillimeter sources
are probably undergoing protostellar collapse, each forming
one or more stars. The IRS 1 cloud core is therefore in the
process of forming a cluster of intermediate-to-high–mass
stars, with the three most massive members, IRS 1–3, all
being late O–to–early B stars.
6. FILAMENTARY CLOUD STRUCTURE AND GLOBAL
STAR FORMATION
The expansion of the H ii region appears to have swept up
and compressed the surrounding dust cloud. Most of the dust
filaments seen in the NGC 7538 molecular cloud, however, are
well separated from the H ii region and have formed inde-
pendently. In this respect the NGC 7538 molecular cloud
appears similar to most molecular clouds, which all appear to
have a tendency to form filamentary cloud structure (Sandell
2000). The H ii region may well have triggered the formation
of IRS 1–3, which lie at the southern boundary of the H ii
region in the densest part of the molecular cloud. Farther west
the cloud is more tenuous, and even though one can see a faint
dust ridge bounding the expanding ionized gas (Fig. 1), it will
eventually be dispersed by the H ii region. The dust core IRS 4
SW (Table 2) could be an exception, since it contains enough
mass to form a star, but without temperature and kinematic
information it is impossible to predict whether the core will
collapse or disperse.
The total cloud mass can be estimated from our submilli-
meter maps. The integrated 850
m flux density over the whole
area we mapped is 232 Jy. If we exclude the three young
high-mass stars IRS 1, IRS 9, and NGC 7538 S, we find a cloud
mass of 5500 M, assuming an average dust temperature of
30 K and a dust emissivity of  ¼ 1:5. Most of this mass is in
the three high-mass cores, and the rest is in dense filaments.
Each core has a size of 1 pc and a mass of more than
1000 M. This agrees well with the theoretical model put
forward by McKee & Tan (2002), who show that high-mass
stars form in such high-mass, high-pressure environments. The
McKee & Tan (2002) model also suggests that high- and low-
mass stars form simultaneously, which appears to be true for
NGC 7538 as well. Even though our continuum observations
do not go deep enough to detect young stars with a circum-
stellar mass below about 10 M, such young stars or protostars
are likely to be present in all three cores. All three high-mass
cores show additional low-luminosity H2O masers or outflows,
which do not coincide with any known IR source or high-mass
clump. Most of the H2O masers are close to dense cloud cores,
suggesting that cores undergo further fragmentation.
We thank Chris Davis for providing us with a FITS image
of his 2.12
m continuum image of the NGC 7538 molecular
cloud. We also thank Osamu Kameya for communicating his
6 cm VLA results on NGC 7538 S and IRS 9 and Neal Evans
II for his constructive referee report.
278 SANDELL & SIEVERS
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