The evolution of the spectral energy distribution in massive young stellar objects

Abstract

Context. The mechanism of formation of massive stars is still a matter of debate. It is not yet clear if it can be considered to be a scaled-up analogue of the low-mass star regime, or if there are additional agents like merging of lower-mass forming objects or accretion from initially unbound material. Most of the uncertainties come from the lack of diagnostic tools to evolutionarily classify large samples of candidate massive protostellar objects that can then be studied in more detail.