Probing Massive Star Formation at the Earliest Phases with SOFIA

Massive star formation commonly occurs within tight clusters of OB stars and creates a local environment that is strongly influenced by the presence of these massive stars (e.g. the Trapezium in Orion). For massive star formation, the formation time could be less than the time for winds and radiation to disrupt the cloud. Our goal is to investigate the immediate environment of massive stars in their earliest phase of evolution. We present 11.1 to 37.1 micron imaging observations of the very dense molecular cloud core MM1in G034.43+00.24 using FORCAST on SOFIA and submillimeter polarimetry using SHARP on CSO. We find that, at the spatial resolution of SOFIA, the point spread function (PSF) of MM1 is a consistent with it being a single source, as expected based on mm and submm observations. The NIR, millimeter, and SHARP polarimetry at 450 microns each show a very different magnetic field geometry and are difficult to interpret. We have HAWC+ time scheduled to map the polarization of G034 at 53 microns to help make sense of the magnetic field geometry. I will briefly mention our search for Massive Class 0 YSOs in the LMC using FORCAST imaging.