Support for Observing at CARMA

Understanding the physics of where and how stars form is a fundamental astrophysical question. The processes associated with star formation are important: on large scales, in the structure and evolution of galaxies, to small scales, in the formation of planets. The NGC2264 molecular cloud is an attractive massive star-forming region to study since at 760 pc it is nearby, and has low foreground extinction. There are two very young, massive star forming clusters that we will observe in several methanol lines at spatial and spectral high resolution. The methanol lines that we will observe cover excitation temperatures from 7 to 130 K, and can trace a range of physical conditions. Reaction on ice grain surfaces is the only viable formation route to methanol, and since it can survive only 10,000 yr in the gas phase, this molecule traces very recent interactions. We can therefore use methanol to probe changes in the physical environment of the clusters induced by recent star formation activity.