AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CHANDRA CARINA COMPLEX PROJECT
L.K. Townsley, ..., L.M. Oskinova, et al.
The Great Nebula in Carina provides an exceptional view into the violent
massive star formation and feedback that
typifies giant Hii regions and starburst galaxies. We have mapped the
Carina star-forming complex in X-rays, using
archival Chandra data and a mosaic of 20 new 60 ks pointings using the
Chandra X-ray Observatory's Advanced
CCD Imaging Spectrometer, as a testbed for understanding recent and
ongoing star formation and to probe Carina's
regions of bright diffuse X-ray emission. This study has yielded a
catalog of properties of >14,000 X-ray point
sources; >9800 of them have multiwavelength counterparts. Using Chandra's
unsurpassed X-ray spatial resolution,
we have separated these point sources from the extensive,
spatially-complex diffuse emission that pervades the
region; X-ray properties of this diffuse emission suggest that it traces
feedback from Carina's massive stars. In this
introductory paper, we motivate the survey design, describe the Chandra
observations, and present some simple
results, providing a foundation for the 15 papers that follow in this
special issue and that present detailed catalogs,
methods, and science results.
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