Extended H2 emission line sources from UWISH2

Abstract

We present the extended source catalogue for the UKIRT Wide Field Infrared Survey for H2 (UWISH2). The survey is unbiased along the inner Galactic Plane from l≈357deg to l≈65deg and |b| ≤ 1 ∘.5 and covers 209 deg2. A further 42.0 and 35.5 deg2 of high dust column density regions have been targeted in Cygnus and Auriga. We have identified 33 200 individual extended H2 features. They have been classified to be associated with about 700 groups of jets and outflows, 284 individual (candidate) planetary nebulae, 30 supernova remnants and about 1300 photodissociation regions. We find a clear decline of star formation activity (traced by H2 emission from jets and photodissociation regions) with increasing distance from the Galactic Centre. About 60 per cent of the detected candidate planetary nebulae have no known counterpart and 25 per cent of all supernova remnants have detectable H2 emission associated with them