Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21442301f&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #214, #423.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.692
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) are molecular clouds seen as extinction features against the mid-infrared Galactic background. Studies of IRDCs have shown them to be cold (< 25 K), dense (> 10^5 cm^-3), and have very high column densities ( 10^23-10^25 cm^-2, e.g., Egan et al. 1998; Carey et al. 1998, 2000). IRDCs host the earliest stages of high-mass star and cluster formation (Rathborne et al. 2005, 2006, 2007). We have mapped 59 IRDC protostellar cores in the fourth Galactic quadrant using the ATNF Mopra telescope simultaneously in HCN (1-0), HC3N (10-9), HCO+ (1-0), HNC (1-0), N2H+ (1-0), and SiO (2-1). We found that the ratios of intensities of the different molecular tracers vary greatly from cloud to cloud, and from core to core within clouds. These different line ratios probably correspond to chemical differences which arise in different evolutionary sequences. We show that specific line ratios distinguish cold pre-stellar cores from warm star-forming cores. N2H+ was found to be a good tracer of active star-forming cores, correlating well with cores containing "green fuzzies,” i.e., extended 4.5 micron emission due to shocked gas (Chambers et al., in press). This work was funded by NSF grant AST-0808001.
Chambers Edward T.
Finn Susanna C.
Jackson James M.
Rathborne Jill M.
Simon Robert
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