Abstract

We present radio-continuum observations at 7 mm made using the Very Large Array toward three massive starforming regions thought to be in very early stages of evolution, selected from the 2002 sample of Sridharan et al. Emission was detected toward all three sources (IRAS 18470-0044, IRAS 19217+1651, and IRAS 23151+5912). We find that in all cases the 7 mm emission corresponds to thermal emission from ionized gas. The regions of ionized gas associated with IRAS 19217+1651 and IRAS 23151+5912 are hypercompact, with diameters of 0.009 and 0.0006 pc and emission measures of 7.0 × 108 and 2.3 × 109 pc cm-6, respectively. © 2007, The American Astronomical Society, All rights reserved.