On the masses of giant molecular cloud complexes

Details On the masses of giant molecular cloud complexes On the masses of giant molecular cloud complexes

Oct 1978

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1978apj...225l..15s&link_type=abstract

Astrophysical Journal, Part 2 - Letters to the Editor, vol. 225, Oct. 1, 1978, p. L15-L19.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

70

Interstellar Gas, Mass, Milky Way Galaxy, Molecular Gases, Astronomical Maps, Carbon Monoxide, Galactic Structure, Nebulae

Scientific paper

A method of mass estimation for molecular clouds is presented which is based on approximate balance in the outer cloud layers between the cloud's gravitation, the galactic tide, and internal pressure. The largest observed clouds, which have greatest linear extents of 100 pc, are found to have masses of at least 200,000 solar masses. The cloud masses cannot exceed this lower limit by more than a factor of 3, or the velocity distributions of disk stars would be more relaxed than is actually observed. This implied upper limit to cloud masses combined with the galactic tide may be related to the absence of clouds at galactocentric radii less than 4 kpc. If Sagittarius B2 is bound, its mass must be more than 50 million solar masses.

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