Multiple collisions in N59 bubble: sequential cloud–cloud collisions

ABSTRACT We report that the gas components in the N59 bubble suffered from sequential multiple cloud–cloud collision (CCC) processes. The molecular gas in the N59 bubble can be decomposed into four velocity components, namely Cloud A [95, 108] km s$^{-1}$, Cloud B [86, 95] km s$^{-1}$, Cloud C [79, 86] km s$^{-1}$, and Cloud D [65, 79] km s$^{-1}$. Four CCC processes occurred among these four velocity components, i.e. Cloud A versus Cloud B, Cloud A versus Cloud C, Cloud C versus Cloud D, and Cloud A versus Cloud D. Using the near- and mid-infrared photometric point source catalogues, we identified 514 young stellar object (YSO) candidates clustered in 13 YSO groups, and most of them ($\sim 60~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$) were located at the colliding interfaces, indicating that they were mainly triggered by these four CCC processes. We also found that these four collisions occurred in a time sequential order: the earliest and most violent collision occurred between Cloud A and Cloud D about 2 Myr ago, then Cloud B collided with Cloud A about 1 Myr ago, and finally, Cloud C collided with Clouds A and D simultaneously about 0.4 Myr ago.