The impressive first results from the WISH GT key program by van Dishoeck et al. indicate that water emission is bright towards the embedded proto-stars of all masses. These emissions are tracing outflows and warm inner regions of the collapsing envelopes (radiatively heated hot cores) which are unique probes of the cooling of these regions and of the kinematics of the dense warm gas. But WISH is limited by the reduced number of targets, and by the unavoidable biases introduced by the stringent selection of sources. The intermediate to high mass range is critical to challenge protostellar evolution models, and we argue that water emission from a complete sample of proto-stars in this mass range will be an important piece of knowledge for outflows to trace indirectly accretion and for hot cores to follow their time of appearance. Only Cygnus X is nearby and rich enough to provide a large sample of such proto-stars. We propose here to dramatically change the level of significance of WISH results by observing as many as 92 proto-stars covering the (final stellar) mass range of 3 to 20 Msun in the single complex of Cygnus X.
Publication
Instrument
HIFI_HifiPoint_dbs
Temporal Coverage
2011-04-21T08:05:51Z/2012-05-31T20:28:18Z
Version
SPG v14.1.0
Mission Description
Herschel was launched on 14 May 2009! It is the fourth 'cornerstone' mission in the ESA science programme. With a 3.5 m Cassegrain telescope it is the largest space telescope ever launched. It is performing photometry and spectroscopy in approximately the 55-671 µm range, bridging the gap between earlier infrared space missions and groundbased facilities.
