Poster abstract

The star forming process and the effects the environment has on it is one of the most fundamental question currently in star formation. It is currently thought that the turbulence present in molecular clouds is very important in regulating the star formation process. However it is not well understood what effects the environment can have on the internal properties and therefore the star formation process in a molecular cloud. The W3 Giant Molecular Cloud is an ideal laboratory to study the effects the environment has on the star formation process, since within it coexist two modes of star formation (spontaneous and triggered). We present here a multi-wavelength study of this cloud using new and existing observations (HARP, FCRAO, SPITZER and SCUBA) in the IR and sub-/millimetre. We calculate the gas temperatures across the cloud (and therefore its mass) for the first time in such large scales and resolution and find a temperature gradient across the cloud that we identify as an age sequence. We calculate the fraction of the gas across the cloud that goes into dense potentially star forming structures and we identify IR counterparts (young stellar objects) to such sub-millimetre dense cores. We find no evidence for different luminosity functions between the two regions (triggered and spontaneous) and no increase in the star formation efficiency caused by triggering. Furthermore, we find evidence that the larger line widths present in the triggered region of the cloud is a result of feedback from the young stellar objects formed there. We conclude, therefore, that while triggering creates new dense structure in the affected regions of the cloud, it does not affect the physical processes of star formation once a dense core has formed.