From filamentary clouds to prestellar cores to the stellar IMF: Initial highlights from the Herschel Gould Belt survey

By P. André, A. Men’shchikov, S. Bontemps, V. Könyves, Fr'ed'erique Motte, N. Schneider, P. Didelon, V. Minier, P. Saraceno, D. Ward-Thompson and 47 more. 2010

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We summarize the first results from the Gould Belt survey, obtained toward the Aquila Rift and Polaris Flare regions during the 'science demonstration phase' of Herschel. Our 70-500 micron images taken in parallel mode with the SPIRE and PACS cameras reveal a wealth of filamentary structure, as well as numerous dense cores embedded in the filaments. Between ~ 350 and 500 prestellar cores and ~ 45-60 Class 0 protostars can be identified in the Aquila field, while ~ unbound starless cores and no protostars are observed in the Polaris field. The prestellar core mass function (CMF) derived for the Aquila region bears a strong resemblance to the stellar initial mass function (IMF), already confirming the close connection between the CMF and the IMF with much better statistics than earlier studies. Comparing and contrasting our Herschel results in Aquila and Polaris, we propose an observationally-driven scenario for core formation according to which complex networks of long, thin filaments form first within molecular clouds, and then the densest filaments fragment into a number of prestellar cores via gravitational instability.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2ae41c323087aef27bd82ec3e065974e1a82d084

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Citations in the corpus

Turbulent molecular clouds (2012, methodology): “The core mass spectrum (CMF) has been first obtained by Motte et al. (1998), Testi & Sargent (1998), Johnstone et al. (2000) and more recently by Alvés et al. (2007) and André et al. (2010).”
Planck2013 results. XXVIII. ThePlanckCatalogue of Compact Sources (2013, background): “Herschel does detect “real” Galactic (protostellar) sources in filaments in brighter regions (like the Aquila rift, André et al. 2010).”
Molecular Clouds in the Milky Way (2015, background): “…cores that follow a log-normal function with a peak at a characteristic mass of ∼0.6 − 1 M (Motte et al. 1998, Testi & Sargent 1998, Alves et al. 2007, André et al. 2010, Könyves et al. 2010) yet are similar in shape to the stellar initial mass function (Salpeter 1955, Miller & Scalo 1979,…”
Three-Dimensional Dust Radiative Transfer ∗ (2013, background): “Panel a is a color image of the Aquila star-formation complex (André et al. 2010).”
An ALMA study of the Orion Integral Filament: I. Evidence for narrow fibers in a massive cloud (2018, background): “100 M pc−1, regularly identified in the solar neighborhood (André et al. 2010; Arzoumanian et al. 2011; Hacar & Tafalla 2011; Hacar et al. 2013; Palmeirim et al. 2013; Hacar et al. 2016).”
Global hierarchical collapse in molecular clouds. Towards a comprehensive scenario (2019, neutral): “…inhomogeneous network of filaments and clumps within them (e.g., Bally et al. 1987; Feitzinger et al. 1987; Gutermuth et al. 2008; Myers 2009; Juvela et al. 2009; André et al. 2010; Henning et al. 2010; Men’shchikov et al. 2010; Molinari et al. 2010; Arzoumanian et al. 2011; Busquet et al. 2013).”
THE STAR FORMATION RATE OF TURBULENT MAGNETIZED CLOUDS: COMPARING THEORY, SIMULATIONS, AND OBSERVATIONS (2012, methodology): “…of gravitational (in)stability based on the actual column density distribution of filaments in Herschel observations of the Gould Belt (GB) by André et al. (2010), for example, are thus likely more accurate and meaningful than estimates based on uniform-density, spherical approximations…”
Cluster-formation in the Rosette molecular cloud at the junctions of filaments (2012, neutral): “From our experience on the curvelet/wavelet analysis from Herschel column density maps so far (André et al. 2010; Arzoumanian et al. 2011; Hill et al. 2011), and from several tests with Rosette, we arrived at a good compromise of 20% of the intensity being in 5 Data are public available in…”
YOUNG STELLAR OBJECTS IN THE GOULD BELT (2015, background): “…its full potential in combination with results from the far-infrared and submillimeter surveys of the Gould Belt by the Herschel Space Observatory and SCUBA-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, once they become fully available (Ward-Thompson et al. 2007; André et al. 2010; Harvey et al. 2013).”
Filaments and ridges in Vela C revealed by Herschel: from low-mass to high-mass star-forming sites (2011, background): “Motte et al. 2010; André et al. 2010; Molinari et al. 2010; Zavagno et al. 2010).”
Planck 2015 results - XXVIII. The Planck Catalogue of Galactic cold clumps (2015, neutral): “Interestingly, the selection of the PGCC sources had to avoid areas of the sky covered by other Herschel Key Programmes, such as the Galactic plane for | b | < 1 ◦ , which was targeted by the Hi-GAL programme (Molinari et al. 2010), and several nearby clouds that are included in the Gould Belt (Andr”
Herschel-Planck dust optical-depth and column-density maps - I. Method description and results for Orion (2014, neutral): “More details about the observational strategy can be found in André et al. (2010).”
Filament Identification through Mathematical Morphology (2015, methodology): “We use the Herschel Gould Belt Survey data of André et al. (2010) supplemented by data on the California molecular cloud from Harvey et al. (2013).”