The effects of massive star formation on the interstellar medium: Photodissociated and molecular gas in NGC 6334

The far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation of massive stars dominates the heating of the interstellar medium (ISM). The gas within the photodissociation regions (PDR), which this FUV radiation creates, dominates the cooling of the gaseous ISM. The goal of this thesis is to determine how the properties of the PDR and molecular gas are affected by the FUV fields of newly formed massive stars. NGC 6334, a nearby molecular cloud with several sites of massive star formation, was observed with airborne and ground-based telescopes in ionized carbon and neutral oxygen ((C II) 158 ;The extended (C II) 158 ;The molecular emission in NGC 6334 shows a complex structure of filaments and bubbles, some of which are filled with PDR gas. The dense gas is anticorrelated with the 6 cm radio flux. The hottest stars have destroyed the remnants of the dense molecular gas from which they formed, while the other, cooler stars may not have hard enough radiation to dissociate the molecules, or have not had time to disperse the dense molecular gas. The CO data suggest temperatures ;Finally, the properties of the individual sources are examined and a description of how each source fits into the broad scheme of massive star formation is presented.