The initial conditions of stellar protocluster formation - I. A catalogue of Spitzer dark clouds

By Nicolas Peretto, G. Fuller. 2009

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Context. The majority of stars form in clusters. Therefore a comprehensive view of star formation requires understanding the initial conditions for cluster formation. Aims. The goal of our study is to shed light on the physical properties of infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) and the role they play in the formation of stellar clusters. This article, the first of a series dedicated to the study of IRDCs, describes techniques developed to establish a complete catalogue of Spitzer IRDCs in the Galaxy. Methods. We have analysed Spitzer GLIMPSE and MIPSGAL data to identify a complete sample of IRDCs in the region of Galactic longitude and latitude 10° < |l|< 65° and |b| < 1°. From the 8 m observations we have constructed opacity maps and used a newly developed extraction algorithm to identify structures above a column density of 1 1022 cm-2. The 24 m data are then used to characterize the star formation activity of each extracted cloud. Results. A total of 11 303 clouds have been extracted. A comparison with the existing MSX based catalogue of IRDCs shows that 80% of these Spitzer dark clouds were previously unknown. The algorithm also extracts ~20 000 to 50 000 fragments within these clouds, depending on detection threshold used. A first look at the MIPSGAL data indicates that between 20% and 68% of these IRDCs show 24 m point-like association. This new database provides an important resource for future studies aiming to understand the initial conditions of star formation in the Galaxy.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2f2bf7a7ccbb573c55eb29ce85dda609782a3e45

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Citations in the corpus

Hierarchical fragmentation and differential star formation in the Galactic ‘Snake’: infrared dark cloud G11.11−0.12 (2014, background): “This is what led to the cloud complexes containing such regions tobe ⋆ E-mail: kwang@eso.org coined “infrared-dark clouds” (IRDCs; Perault et al. 1996;Egan et al. 1998; Hennebelle et al. 2001; Simon et al. 2006a,b; Peretto & Fuller 2009).”
Characterizing precursors to stellar clusters with Herschel (2011, methodology): “5′ was determined (see Peretto & Fuller 2009, for more details on this smoothing kernel choice) to be large enough to capture the largest IRDCs and midIR-bright objects, while still small enough to capture the background variations.”
Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies (2012, methodology): “Complementary surveys of clouds have been done using mid-infrared extinction (e.g., Perault et al. 1996; Egan et al. 1998; Peretto & Fuller 2009), which can identify Infrared Dark Clouds (IRDCs) against the Galactic background emission.”
SDC13 infrared dark clouds: longitudinally collapsing filaments? (2013, methodology): “In this paper, we present results of an IRDC (hereafter called SDC13), composed of three Spitzer dark clouds from the Peretto & Fuller (2009) catalogue (SDC13.”
Global collapse of molecular clouds as a formation mechanism for the most massive stars (2013, methodology): “Mid-infrared extinction mapping of IRDCs is a powerful method for measuring their column density distribution at high resolution (Peretto & Fuller 2009; Butler & Tan 2009).”
CHEMISTRY IN INFRARED DARK CLOUD CLUMPS: A MOLECULAR LINE SURVEY AT 3 mm (2011, background): “The trend of decreasing N2H +/HCO+ ratio with the evolution of the clumps may not extend to quiescent clumps due to one or a combination of the following reasons: (a) the sample of quiescent clumps could contain clumps with embedded star formation that was not detected by Spitzer, (b) CO has not had”
Ammonia from cold high-mass clumps discovered in the inner Galactic disk by the ATLASGAL survey (2012, methodology): “Previous studies revealed that IRDCs are cold (<25 K), dense (>105 cm−3) and have high column densities (∼1023–1025 cm−2, Rathborne et al. 2006; Simon et al. 2006a).”
An ALMA study of the Orion Integral Filament: I. Evidence for narrow fibers in a massive cloud (2018, background): “As indicated by recent galactic plane surveys, high-mass stars and massive clusters are typically formed within filaments with total masses per-unit-length (Mlin) between ∼100 and 4000 M pc−1 (e.g., Peretto & Fuller 2009; Molinari et al. 2010; Schisano et al. 2014; Li et al. 2016).”
HOW MANY INFRARED DARK CLOUDS CAN FORM MASSIVE STARS AND CLUSTERS? (2010, background): “Typical Star Formation Properties in the Galaxy The Peretto & Fuller (2009) catalogue lists IRDC angular sizes and column densities for the entire Galactic Plane covered by Spitzer.”
ATLASGAL - properties of a complete sample of Galactic clumps (2017, methodology): “We cross-correlated the positions of our sample of dense clumps with the position of infrared dark clouds (IRDCs; e.g., Peretto & Fuller 2009), thereby identifying 1912 IRDCs in our sample that can be used to check the consistency of our distance assignments.”
THE BOLOCAM GALACTIC PLANE SURVEY: SURVEY DESCRIPTION AND DATA REDUCTION (2010, methodology): “IRDCs have now been extensively cataloged with MSX (Simon et al. 2006a) and GLIMPSE 8 μm data (Peretto & Fuller 2009).”
The ATLASGAL survey: a catalog of dust condensations in the Galactic plane (2013, methodology): “These clouds have been cataloged using MSX (Simon et al. 2006; Rathborne et al. 2006) and the more sensitive Spitzer Space Telescope (Peretto & Fuller 2009; Butler & Tan 2009; Peretto & Fuller 2010; Rygl et al. 2010).”