High-Mass Star Formation. I. The Mass Distribution of Submillimeter Clumps in NGC 7538

We present submillimeter continuum maps at 450 and 850 μm of a 12′ × 8′ region of the NGC 7538 high-mass star-forming region, made using the Submillimeter Common-User Bolometer Array (SCUBA) on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. We used an automated clump-finding algorithm to identify 67 clumps in the 450 μm image and 77 in the 850 μm image. Contrary to previous studies, we find a positive correlation between high spectral index, α, and high …