The Mass-Size Relation From Clouds to Cores. I. A New Probe of Structure In Molecular Clouds

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https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/712/2/1137Metadata
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Kauffmann, Jens, Thushara Pillai, Rahul Shetty, Philip C. Myers, and Alyssa A. Goodman. 2010. The mass-size relation from clouds to cores. I. A new probe of structure in molecular clouds. The Astrophysical Journal 712(2): 1137-1146.Abstract
We use a new contour-based map analysis technique to measure the mass and size of molecular cloud fragments continuously over a wide range of spatial scales \((0.05 \leq r/pc \leq 10)\), i.e., from the scale of dense cores to those of entire clouds. The present paper presents the method via a detailed exploration of the Perseus molecular cloud. Dust extinction and emission data are combined to yield reliable scale-dependent measurements of mass. This scale-independent analysis approach is useful for several reasons. First, it provides a more comprehensive characterization of a map (i.e., not biased toward a particular spatial scale). Such a lack of bias is extremely useful for the joint analysis of many data sets taken with different spatial resolution. This includes comparisons between different cloud complexes. Second, the multi-scale mass-size data constitute a unique resource to derive slopes of mass-size laws (via power-law fits). Such slopes provide singular constraints on large-scale density gradients in clouds.Other Sources
http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.0608Terms of Use
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