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Aims. We investigate the role of selective dissociation in the process of star formation by comparing the physical parameters of protostellar-prestellar cores and the distinct regions with the CO isotope distributions in photodissociation regions. We seek to understand whether there is a better connection between the evolutionary age of star forming regions and the effect of selective dissociation Methods. Wide-field observations of the $\rm ^{12}CO$, $\rm ^{13}CO$, and $\rm C^{18}O$ ( J = 1 - 0) emission lines are used to study the ongoing star formation activity in the Aquila molecular region, and the 70 $\mu$m and 250 $\mu$m data are used to describe the heating of the surrounding material and as an indicator of the evolutionary age of the core. Results. The protostellar-prestellar cores are found at locations with the highest $\rm C^{18}O$ column densities and their increasing evolutionary age would relate to an increasing 70$\mu$m/250$\mu$m emission ratio at their location. An evolutionary age of the cores may also follow from the $\rm ^{13}CO$ versus $\rm C^{18}O$ abundance ratio, which decreases with increasing $\rm C^{18}O$ column densities. The original mass has been estimated for nine representative star formation regions and the original mass of the region correlated well with the integrated 70 $\mu$m flux density. Similarly, the $ X_{\rm ^{13}CO}$/$X_{\rm C^{18}O}$ implying the dissociation rate for these regions correlates with the 70$\mu$m/250$\mu$m flux density ratio and reflects the evolutionary age of the star formation activity., Comment: 10 pages

We surveyed the Aquila Rift complex including the Serpens South and W 40 regions in the NH3 (1,1) and (2,2) transitions making use of the Nanshan 26-m telescope. Our observations cover an area of ~ 1.5° × 2.2° (11.4 pc × 16.7 pc). The kinetic temperatures of the dense gas in the Aquila Rift complex obtained from NH3 (2,2)/(1,1) ratios range from 8.9 to 35.0 K with an average of 15.3 ± 6.1 K (errors are standard deviations of the mean). Low gas temperatures are associated with Serpens South ranging from 8.9 to 16.8 K with an average of 12.3 ± 1.7 K, while dense gas in the W 40 region shows higher temperatures ranging from 17.7 to 35.0 K with an average of 25.1 ± 4.9 K. A comparison of kinetic temperatures derived from para-NH3 (2,2)/(1,1) against HiGal dust temperatures indicates that the gas and dust temperatures are in agreement in the low-mass-star formation region of Serpens South. In the high-mass-star formation region W 40, the measured gas kinetic temperatures are higher than those of the dust. The turbulent component of the velocity dispersion of NH3 (1,1) is found to be positively correlated with the gas kinetic temperature, which indicates that the dense gas may be heated by dissipation of turbulent energy. For the fractional total-NH3 (para+ortho) abundance obtained by a comparison with Herschel infrared continuum data representing dust emission, we find values from 0.1 ×10−8 to 2.1 ×10−7 with an average of 6.9 (±4.5) × 10−8. Serpens South also shows a fractional total-NH3 (para+ortho) abundance ranging from 0.2 ×10−8 to 2.1 ×10−7 with an average of 8.6 (±3.8) × 10−8. In W 40, values are lower, between 0.1 and 4.3 ×10−8 with an average of 1.6 (±1.4) × 10−8. Weak velocity gradients demonstrate that the rotational energy is a negligible fraction of the gravitational energy. In W 40, gas and dust temperatures are not strongly dependent on the projected distance to the recently formed massive stars. Overall, the morphology of the mapped region is ring-like, with strong emission at lower and weak emission at higher Galactic longitudes. However, the presence of a physical connection between the two parts remains questionable.

The formaldehyde H2CO(1(10) -1(11) ) absorption line and H110 alpha radio recombination line have been observed toward the Aquila Molecular Cloud using the Nanshan 25 m telescope operated by the Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory CAS. These first observations of the H2CO (1(10) -1(11) ) absorption line determine the extent of the molecular regions that are affected by the ongoing star formation in the Aquila molecular complex and show some of the dynamic properties. The distribution of the excitation temperature T-ex for H2CO identifies the two known star formation regions W40 and Serpens South as well as a smaller new region Serpens 3. The intensity and velocity distributions of H2CO and (CO)-C-13(1-0) do not agree well with each other, which confirms that the H2CO absorption structure is mostly determined by the excitation of the molecules resulting from the star formation rather than by the availability of molecular material as represented by the distribution. Some velocity-coherent linear (CO)-C-13(1-0) structures have been identified in velocity channel maps of H2CO and it is found that the three star formation regions lie on the intersect points of filaments. The H110 alpha emission is found only at the location of the W40 H II region and spectral profile indicates a redshifted spherical outflow structure in the outskirts of the H II region. Sensitive mapping of H2CO absorption of the Aquila Complex has correctly identified the locations of star formation activity in complex molecular clouds and the spectral profiles reveal the dominant velocity components and may identify the presence of outflows.

A catalog of 4231 Galactic H2CO absorption lines ( $\sim 2241$ sources) at 6 cm has been collected from the literature published up to 2014. The distribution of these H2CO absorption lines has been compared with the OH masers at 18 cm in the Milky Way. Most of the OH masers are distributed in the inner Galaxy ( $-75^{\circ} < l < 75^{\circ}$ ) with a higher Galactic latitude than the H2CO sources ( $-5^{\circ} < b < 5^{\circ}$ ). The longitude-velocity distributions of H2CO and OH show that the majority of the objects are located in the molecular ring following the CO molecular gas distribution. The range of velocities of the OH masers is larger and distribution more diffuse than the H2CO sources in the Galactic longitude range $30^{\circ} < l < 90^{\circ}$ . The H2CO sources have been matched with the four ground state transitions of OH and a close associations have been found with H2CO clouds with small velocity differences ( $

Infrared Dark Clouds (IRDCs) are a valuable sample to study the initial conditions and the very early stages of the evolution of massive stars. Using the KOSMA telescope, we performed simultaneous single point 12CO(2–1) and (3–2) observations toward 117 IRDCs with a detection rate of 74 % for 12CO(2–1) and 58 % for 12CO(3–2). The non-detected sources are found not to represent real dark clouds. The distances of the IRDCs have been calculated using a Bayesian distance estimator indicating that the sources are mainly concentrated in the Outer, Perseus, Local, Sagittarius and Scutum arms. The excitation temperature and the filling factor have been solved simultaneously for the two emission lines. The average excitation temperature is about 10 K. The filling factors are used to correct the integrated intensity ratio of 12CO(3–2) to (2–1) resulting in a typical value of the ratio of $0.69\pm0.47$ for the majority of sources. A small number of sources exhibit enhanced values for the ratio because of the presence of a nearby HII region. The ratios do not show significant differences for sources with embedded far-infrared sources.

In this work, we aim to characterise high-mass clumps with infall motions. We selected 327 clumps from the Millimetre Astronomy Legacy Team 90-GHz (MALT90) survey, and identified 100 infall candidates. Combined with the results of He et al. (2015), we obtained a sample of 732 high-mass clumps, including 231 massive infall candidates and 501 clumps where infall is not detected. Objects in our sample were classified as pre-stellar, proto-stellar, HII or photo-dissociation region (PDR). The detection rates of the infall candidates in the pre-stellar, proto-stellar, HII and PDR stages are 41.2%, 36.6%, 30.6% and 12.7%, respectively. The infall candidates have a higher H$_{2}$ column density and volume density compared with the clumps where infall is not detected at every stage. For the infall candidates, the median values of the infall rates at the pre-stellar, proto-stellar, HII and PDR stages are 2.6$\times$10$^{-3}$, 7.0$\times$10$^{-3}$, 6.5$\times$10$^{-3}$ and 5.5$\times$10$^{-3}$ M$_\odot$ yr$^{-1}$, respectively. These values indicate that infall candidates at later evolutionary stages are still accumulating material efficiently. It is interesting to find that both infall candidates and clumps where infall is not detected show a clear trend of increasing mass from the pre-stellar to proto-stellar, and to the HII stages. The power indices of the clump mass function (ClMF) are 2.04$\pm$0.16 and 2.17$\pm$0.31 for the infall candidates and clumps where infall is not detected, respectively, which agree well with the power index of the stellar initial mass function (2.35) and the cold Planck cores (2.0)., Comment: 26 pages, 26 figures, accepted for publication on MNRAS