Small Scale Distribution in Molecular Clouds

Details Small Scale Distribution in Molecular Clouds Small Scale Distribution in Molecular Clouds

Mar 1995

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1995yera.conf...32t&link_type=abstract

The XXVIIth Young European Radio Astronomers Conference, ed. D.A. Green and W. Steffen, in association with Cambridge University

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The presence of small scale fluctuations of density (or of optical properties) in the spatial distribution of the dust would have important consequences for the modelling of molecular clouds because the UV light penetration and therefore the physical and chemical processes depend strongly on their structure (cf Boisse (1990),Hobson et al. (1993)). CO emission maps obtained in recent years show a very fragmented distribution of the dense gas at all scales observed (Falgarone et al. (1991)). If the dust- to-gas ratio were uniform at all scales, as generally accepted, then the distribution of the dust should itself be as inhomogeneous as that of the gas. But, we have no direct information about it at scales smaller than those reached by IRAS (a few arcmin). We have developed methods to study in a direct way the amplitude of small scale variations of the extinction throughout translucent clouds (Lambda_V ~= 2 - 5 mag). First, we have extended the classical ``star count'' method by using the full stellar magnitude distributions as determined from CCD observations. We thus estimate the amplitude of extinction variations and investigate the possible presence of optically thick clumps (as suggested by CO observations). We also consider extended background sources, like galaxies or HII regions, located behind clouds which can be used to get some information on the amplitude of the density fluctuations. We present here some preliminary results from the BVRI photometric study of a stellar field and galaxies seen through translucent clouds (Lambda_V ~= 2 mag).

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