Study of Star Forming Regions with An Infrared 2-Dimensional Array Photometer

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The objective of this project is to make spectroscopic measurements of diffuse sources in our Galaxy and external galaxies by using an infrared 2-dimensional array, photometer. This array photometer has a small number, 4 x 4 = 16, of elements, however, it covers large field-of-view and has high sensitivity to detect weak emission lines from extended sources in case of using together with a wide-field spectrometer, for example, a Fabry-Perot spectrometer. Unfortunately, we have not yet obtained scientific data with this instrument, we expect that this instrument will produce meaningful data in the near future.An significant example of line spectroscopic observations is a series of observations of molecular hydrogen emission at 2 mum in various kinds of galactic sources. It made us understand that contributions of fluorescent H_2 emission in various sources are much important. So far almost all detectable H_2 emission was considered to be excited by shook phenomena, however, we showed it was not correct. We found fluorescent excitation is dominant in a starburst galaxy. Our results solve the puzzle that the observed intensity of H_2 emission is much stronger than the expected value if a shook excitation is assumed. In the interpretation of H_2 emission in external galaxies: Seyfert and starburst galaxies, the measurements of H_2 emission will reveal not only physical conditions of molecular gas at emission regions, but also histories of star formation and distribution of stats and interstellar matter.The study promoted by this project, that is, spectroscopic observations of infrared lines for extended sources with high sensitivity and wide field-of-view, will produce fruitful scientific results on a wide variety of astrophysioll phenomena in the near future.