Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21343915p&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #439.15; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.316
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Infrared Dark Clouds (IRDCs) are cold and dense regions (T< 25 K, n > 105 cm-3) that are seen as extinction features against the bright mid-IR Galactic background. IRDCs harbor compact cores, which have the same sizes and masses as embedded clusters and are believed to be precursors to stellar clusters. The Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy (CARMA) presents an exceptional opportunity to study in detail the structure and dynamics of these proto-cluster cores at high angular resolution.
We present millimeter continuum observations obtained with CARMA of 22 IRDC cores, selected from the dense cores found in the Cygnus-X region (Motte et al. 2007) and from the IRDC cores survey of Rathborne et al. (2006). The objective of this study is to establish the presence of mass segregation at the formative stage of an stellar cluster. Millimeter continuum emission from compact sources, hereafter referred as kernels, was detected towards most of the IRDC cores observed, and in total we detected 56 kernels.
We analyze the spatial distribution of the kernels with respect to the large scale IRDC core, to investigate whether or not mass segregation is present in this early stage of cluster formation. We calculate the mass fraction of the IRDC core present in the detected kernels using the emission from the millimeter continuum images and published 1.2 mm and 850 μm flux densities. The derived mass for the kernels range between few solar masses to ? M&sun;, which indicates that they can potentially form high mass stars, and the observed kernel sizes vary from 2000 to 2 × 104 AU. We were able to establish that for the majority of the IRDC cores studied the mass of the kernels found in their interiors encompass a large fraction of the total mass of the IRDC core.
Carpenter John Michael
Pérez Laura M.
Sargent Anneila I.
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