The M17SW molecular cloud core has been mapped in continuum emission at 450, 600, 800, 1100 and 1300 µm, using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, with an angular resolution of 8 arcsec for the shortest wavelength. The 450- and 600-µm, maps, in particular, show the dust emission to be highly clumped; these clumps are, in some cases, identified with those seen in previous optically thin line observations. The continuum observations are consistent with a single greybody at a temperature of 30 K, and suggest masses of 7600 and 1300 M⊙ for the entire M17SW region and the northern condensation respectively; the corresponding total integrated luminosities for each region are |2.4 × 10⁵| and |4.2 × 10⁴ L_|. Using an analytical inversion technique, however, which allows for a continuous range of dust temperatures, we find a mass-weighted average temperature of ≈18 K, and masses for M17SW and the northern condensation alone of |1.6 × 10⁴| and 2000 M0 respectively. The flux from the northern condensation is dominated by three main components, each of which lies within a few arcsec of an H2O maser. All these objects have central densities greater than the Jeans critical density, and have masses in the range 300 to 450 M⊙ with luminosities of 8000 to 12 000 L⊙; these values are consistent with them containing very deeply embedded young stellar objects of mass |~ 10\, M|.
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Hobson et al. (1993) studied this question.