The Population of Compact Radio Sources in M17

Abstract

Abstract We present a catalog of radio sources of the M17 region based on deep X-band radio observations centered at 10 GHz obtained with the Jansky Very Large Array in the A configuration. We detect a total of 194 radio sources, 12 of them extended and 182 compact. We find that a significant fraction (at least 40% in our catalog) have suspected gyrosynchrotron emission associated with stellar coronal emission. By comparing the radio luminosities of our sources with their X-ray counterparts, when available, we find that they are underluminous in X-rays with respect to the Güdel–Benz relation, but a correlation with a similar slope is obtained provided that only sources with evident nonthermal nature are selected from the sample compiled for the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) and M17. The comparison of M17 with the ONC and NGC 6334D-F leads to a similar luminosity function for the three regions, at least for the more luminous sources. However, the radio sources in M17 are three times more numerous compared to the other regions at a given luminosity and their spatial distribution differs from that of Orion. Moreover, an arc-shaped structure of 40″ in extent is observed in our map, identified previously as an ionizing front, with the cometary hypercompact source UC1 at its focus. Archival 1 mm ALMA data reveals compact emission coincident with the radio wavelength peak, possibly associated with a protostellar disk of the massive star exciting UC1.