Project Overview

The CARMA Large Area Star Formation Survey (CLASSy) is a CARMA Key Project that mapped over 800 square arcminutes of the Perseus and Serpens Molecular Clouds. We observed the N2H+, HCN, and HCO+ J=1-0 emission lines with 7'' angular resolution and 0.16 km/s spectral resolution. The observations were done using the full CARMA 23-element array, along with CARMA single-dish mode, so that all line emission could be recovered.


CARMA is uniquely capable of surveying the kinematics and structure of star-forming gas in nearby clouds from parsec to thousand AU scales thanks to its imaging capability and large-area mosaicing efficiency. Spectral-line images that span large to small scales, and cover a range of cloud environments, are of fundamental importance to understanding how stars form.


The main goals of this project are to: 1) test the predictions of turbulence-driven star formation, 2) investigate the hierarchical nature of dense gas in different star forming environments, 3) clarify the relationship between dense cores, their surrounding cloud, and the local YSOs, and 4) study core evolution.


The data products from this CARMA Key Project will be made available to the entire star formation community on this website, for data mining and complementary work.


If referencing the project in general, please use: Storm et al., "CARMA Large Area Star Formation Survey: Project Overview with Analysis of Dense Gas Structure and Kinematics in Barnard 1," 2014, ApJ, 794, 165. If referencing the data source for particular CLASSy regions, please refer to the specific publication that presented those data.


Support for CARMA construction was derived from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the Associates of the California Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, the states of Illinois, California, and Maryland, and the National Science Foundation. Ongoing CARMA development and operations are supported by the National Science Foundation under a cooperative agreement, and by the CARMA partner universities.


Photo credit: Jens Kauffmann

Web design: Jonas John