Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21431505j&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #214, #315.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.760
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The "Nessie" nebula is a filamentary Infrared Dark Cloud with an extremely large aspect ratio of over 150:1. Its angular size is at least 1.5 deg in length, but only 0.1 deg in width (150 pc x 0.5 pc). Maps of HNC, HCO+, N2H+, and HNC 1-0 made with the Australia Telescope National Facility Mopra telescope shows that all of its regions of high mid-infrared extinction share a common velocity within 2 km/s. Consequently, the nebula is a single, coherent object and not the chance alignment of multiple unrelated clouds. The nebula contains a number of star-forming cores which appear to have a characteristic spacing of 5 pc. The theory of gravitationally bound gaseous cylinders predicts the existence of such cores, which, due to the "sausage" or "varicose" fluid instability, fragment from the cylinder at this characteristic length scale. We speculate that cluster formation commonly arises from the fragmentation of filamentary infrared dark clouds due to fluid instabilities that lead to massive, star-forming cores. Indeed, the filamentary molecular gas clouds often found near high-mass star-forming regions may represent a later evolutionary stage of infrared dark cloud evolution.
Chambers Erin
Finn Susanna
Jackson James M.
Rathborne Jill M.
Simon Robert
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