The Large- and Small-Scale Structures of Dust in the Star-forming Perseus Molecular Cloud

By H. Kirk, D. Johnstone, J. di Francesco. 2006

182 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an analysis of ~3.5 deg2 of submillimeter continuum and extinction data of the Perseus molecular cloud. We identify 58 clumps in the submillimeter map, and we identify 39 structures ("cores") and 11 associations of structures ("super cores") in the extinction map. The cumulative mass distributions of the submillimeter clumps and extinction cores have steep slopes (α ~ 2 and 1.5-2, respectively), steeper than the Salpeter initial mass function (IMF; α = 1.35), while the distribution of extinction super cores has a shallow slope (α ~ 1). Most of the submillimeter clumps are well fit by stable Bonnor-Ebert spheres with 10 K < T < 19 K and 5.5 <(Pext/k) < 6.0. The clumps are found only in the highest column density regions (AV > 5-7 mag), although Bonnor-Ebert models suggest that we should have been able to detect them at lower column densities if they exist. These observations provide a stronger case for an extinction threshold than that found in analysis of less sensitive observations of the Ophiuchus molecular cloud (Johnstone et al.). The relationship between submillimeter clumps and their parent extinction core has been analyzed. The submillimeter clumps tend to lie offset from the larger extinction peaks, suggesting that the clumps formed via an external triggering event, consistent with previous observations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ab2e180ffd0acb23e6e1f257a7ca141d021d42b8

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Citations in the corpus

The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope Legacy Survey of Nearby Star‐forming Regions in the Gould Belt (2007, methodology): “First, while the cloud mass function includes all the mass in the cloud (by definition), the core mass function generally only adds up to a few percent of the mass of the parent cloud (Johnstone et al. 2004; H. Kirk et al. 2006).”
THE SPITZER c2d LEGACY RESULTS: STAR-FORMATION RATES AND EFFICIENCIES; EVOLUTION AND LIFETIMES (2008, background): “…Djupvik et al. (2006), Enoch et al. (2006), Enoch et al. (2007), Hatchell et al. (2005), Hatchell et al. (2007), Henning et al. (1993), Johnstone et al. (2000), Kirk et al. (2006), Meŕın et al. (2008a), Stanke et al. (2006), Tachihara et al. (2007), Wu et al. (2007), and Young et al. (2006).”
A Spitzer Census of the IC 348 Nebula (2007, methodology): “Finally, Kirk et al. (2006) produced a archival based SCUBA mosaic of the entire Perseus cloud for the COMPLETE project and these data are publicly available on their website.”
Identifying the Low-Luminosity Population of Embedded Protostars in the c2d Observations of Clouds and Cores (2007, methodology): “The surveys used for Perseus are a 1.1 mm dust continuum survey of 7.5 deg2 with Bolocam at the CSO (Enoch et al. 2006), an 850 µm dust continuum survey of 3.5 deg2 with SCUBA at the JCMT (Kirk et al. 2006), a 450 and 850 µm dust continuum survey of 3.0 deg2 with SCUBA at the JCMT (Hatchell et al. 2”
DIRECT OBSERVATION OF A SHARP TRANSITION TO COHERENCE IN DENSE CORES (2010, methodology): “Dust continuum observations using SCUBA (Hatchell et al. 2005; Kirk et al. 2006), MAMBO (Motte et al. 1998; Kauffmann et al. 2008) and SHARC II (Li et al. 2007) have angular resolution of 15′′, 11′′ and 9′′, respectively, which are high enough to enable the study of the transition to coherence.”
An Ammonia Spectral Atlas of Dense Cores in Perseus (2007, methodology): “The derived kinetic temperatures of the cores are uniformly cool (Tk < 20 K) and are typically 11 K, substantially lower than is assumed in some work (e.g., Kirk et al. 2006) for submillimeter cores.”
The SCUBA Legacy Catalogues: Submillimeter-Continuum Objects Detected by SCUBA (2008, methodology): “For reference, however, we note that Enoch et al. (2006) performed empirical tests for completeness using Monte Carlo simulations of the identification of artificial Gaussian sources of various size in empty regions of their wide-field 1.3 mm continuum map of the Perseus cloud, which had a reasonabl”
A census of dense cores in the Aquila cloud complex: SPIRE/PACS observations from the Herschel Gould Belt survey (2015, background): “The existence of such a threshold had been suspected for a long time, based on the results of ground-based millimeter and submillimeter surveys for cores in, e.g., the Taurus, Ophiuchus, and Perseus clouds (e.g., Onishi et al. 1998; Johnstone et al. 2004; Kirk et al. 2006).”
ANALYTICAL STAR FORMATION RATE FROM GRAVOTURBULENT FRAGMENTATION (2011, background): “Various authors (e.g. Johnstone et al. 2004, Kirk et al. 2006, Heiderman et al. 2010) have suggested that the origin of such a density threshold is related to magnetic fields, which cannot support the gas against gravitational collapse above some density.”
PROPERTIES OF THE YOUNGEST PROTOSTARS IN PERSEUS, SERPENS, AND OPHIUCHUS (2008, background): “Additional SHARC II 350 µm fluxes (Wu et al. 2007) and SCUBA 850 µm fluxes (Kirk et al. 2006, open circles) are included when available.”