The Herschel first look at protostars in the Aquila rift*

As part of the science demonstration phase of the Herschel mission of the Gould Belt key program, the Aquila rift molecular complex has been observed. The complete ~ 3.3° × 3.3° imaging with SPIRE 250/350/500 μm and PACS 70/160 μm allows a deep investigation of embedded protostellar phases, probing of the dust emission from warm inner regions at 70 and 160 μm to the bulk of the cold envelopes between 250 and 500 μm. We used a systematic detection technique operating simultaneously on all Herschel bands to build a sample of protostars. Spectral energy distributions are derived to measure luminosities and envelope masses, and to place the protostars in an Menv – Lbol evolutionary diagram. The spatial distribution of protostars indicates three star-forming sites in Aquila, with W40/Sh2-64 HII region by far the richest. Most of the detected protostars are newly discovered. For a reduced area around the Serpens South cluster, we could compare the Herschel census of protostars with Spitzer results. The Herschel protostars are younger than in Spitzer with 7 Class 0 YSOs newly revealed by Herschel. For the entire Aquila field, we find a total of ~45–60 Class 0 YSOs discovered by Herschel. This confirms the global statistics of several hundred Class 0 YSOs that should be found in the whole Gould Belt Survey.