HIGH-RESOLUTION MILLIMETER AND SUBMILLIMETER CONTINUUM OBSERVATIONS OF M17SW .2. IDENTIFICATION OF EMBEDDED SOURCES ASSOCIATED WITH H2O MASERS

The M17SW molecular cloud core has been mapped in continuum emission a t 450, 600, 800, 1100 and 1300 mum, using the James Clerk Maxwell Tele scope, with an angular resolution of 8 arcsec for the shortest wavelen gth. The 450- and 600-mum maps, in particular, show the dust emission to be highly clumped; these clumps are, in some cases, identified with those seen in previous optically thin line observations. The continuu m observations are consistent with a single greybody at a temperature of 30 K, and suggest masses of 7600 and 1300 M. for the entire M17SW r egion and the northern condensation respectively; the corresponding to tal integrated luminosities for each region are 2.4 x 10(5) and 4.2 x 10(4) L.. Using an analytical inversion technique, however, which allo ws for a continuous range of dust temperatures, we find a mass-weighte d average temperature of almost-equal-to 18 K, and masses for M17SW an d the northern condensation alone of 1.6 x 10(4) and 2000 M. respectiv ely. The flux from the northern condensation is dominated by three mai n components, each of which lies within a few arcsec of an H2O maser. All these objects have central densities greater than the Jeans critic al density, and have masses in the range 300 to 450 M., with luminosit ies of 8000 to 12 000 L.; these values are consistent with them contai ning very deeply embedded young stellar objects of mass is similar to 10 M..