A census of dense cores in the Taurus L1495 cloud from the Herschel Gould Belt Survey

Marsh, K. A.; Kirk, J. M.; André, Ph.; Griffin, M. J.; Könyves, V.; Palmeirim, P.; Men'shchikov, A.; Ward-Thompson, D.; Benedettini, M.; Bresnahan, D. W.; Di Francesco, J.; Elia, D.; Peretto, N.; Pezzuto, S.; Roy, A.; Sadavoy, S.; Schneider, N.; Spinoglio, L. and White, G. J. (2016). A census of dense cores in the Taurus L1495 cloud from the Herschel Gould Belt Survey. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 459(1) pp. 342–356.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw301

Abstract

We present a catalogue of dense cores in a ∼4° × 2° field of the Taurus star-forming region, inclusive of the L1495 cloud, derived from HerschelSPIRE and PACS observations in the 70 μm, 160 μm, 250 μm, 350 μm, and 500 μm continuum bands. Estimates of mean dust temperature and total mass are derived using modified blackbody fits to the spectral energy distributions. We detect 528 starless cores of which ∼10–20% are gravitationally bound and therefore presumably prestellar. Our census of unbound objects is ∼85% complete for M > 0.015 M_⊙ in low density regions (AV∼<5AV∼<5 mag), while the bound (prestellar) subset is ∼85% complete for M > 0.1 M_⊙ overall. The prestellar CMF is consistent with lognormal form, resembling the stellar system initial mass function, as has been reported previously. All of the inferred prestellar cores lie on filamentary structures whose column densities exceed the expected threshold for filamentary collapse, in agreement with previous reports. Unlike the prestellar CMF, the unbound starless CMF is not lognormal, but instead is consistent with a power-law form below 0.3 M_⊙ and shows no evidence for a low-mass turnover. It resembles previously reported mass distributions for CO clumps at low masses (M∼<0.3M⊙M∼<0.3M⊙). The volume density PDF, however, is accurately lognormal except at high densities. It is consistent with the effects of self-gravity on magnetized supersonic turbulence. The only significant deviation from lognormality is a high-density tail which can be attributed unambiguously to prestellar cores.

Viewing alternatives

Metrics

Item Actions

Export

You can export this page using these formats Digital Object Identifier - DOI

About

• Item ORO ID
• 45591
• Item Type
• Journal Item
• ISSN
• 1365-2966
• Project Funding Details

• Funded Project Name	Project ID	Funding Body
  ORISTARS	291294	ERC (European Research Council)

• Keywords
• ISM; individual objects; L1495; clouds; local interstellar matter; submillimetre; stars formation; luminosity function; mass function
• Academic Unit or School
• Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) > Physical Sciences
  Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)
• Copyright Holders
• © 2016 The Authors and RAS
• Depositing User
• G. J. White