Carma Large Area Star Formation Survey: dense gas in the young l1451 region of Perseus

Journal Article · Thu Oct 20 04:00:00 EDT 2016 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.3847/0004-637X/830/2/127· OSTI ID:22869132

Storm, Shaye; Lee, Katherine I. ^[1]; Mundy, Lee G.; Teuben, Peter; Pound, Marc W. ^[2]; Fernández-López, Manuel; Looney, Leslie W.; Segura-Cox, Dominique M. ^[3]; Arce, Héctor G. ^[4]; Rosolowsky, Erik W. ^[5]; Meisner, Aaron M. ^[6]; Isella, Andrea ^[7]; Kauffmann, Jens ^[8]; Shirley, Yancy L. ^[9]; Kwon, Woojin ^[10]; Plunkett, Adele L. ^[11]; Tassis, Konstantinos ^[12]; others, and

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1. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
2. Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 (United States)
3. Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 1002 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801 (United States)
4. Department of Astronomy, Yale University, P.O. Box 208101, New Haven, CT 06520-8101 (United States)
5. University of Alberta, Department of Physics, 4-181 CCIS, Edmonton AB T6G 2E1 (Canada)
6. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
7. Physics and Astronomy Department, Rice University, P.O. Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892 (United States)
8. Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69 D-53121, Bonn (Germany)
9. Steward Observatory, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721 (United States)
10. Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, 776 Daedeok-daero, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34055 (Korea, Republic of)
11. European Southern Observatory, Av. Alonso de Cordova 3107, Vitacura, Santiago de Chile (Chile)
12. Department of Physics and Institute of Theoretical and Computational Physics, University of Crete, PO Box 2208, GR-710 03, Heraklion, Crete (Greece)

We present a 3 mm spectral line and continuum survey of L1451 in the Perseus Molecular Cloud. These observations are from the CARMA Large Area Star Formation Survey (CLASSy), which also imaged Barnard 1, NGC 1333, Serpens Main, and Serpens South. L1451 is the survey region with the lowest level of star formation activity—it contains no confirmed protostars. HCO{sup +}, HCN, and N{sub 2}H{sup +} (J=1→0) are all detected throughout the region, with HCO{sup +} being the most spatially widespread, and molecular emission seen toward 90% of the area above N(H{sub 2}) column densities of 1.9 × 10{sup 21} cm{sup −2}. HCO{sup +} has the broadest velocity dispersion, near 0.3 km s{sup −1} on average, compared with ∼0.15 km s{sup −1} for the other molecules, thus representing a range of subsonic to supersonic gas motions. Our non-binary dendrogram analysis reveals that the dense gas traced by each molecule has a similar hierarchical structure, and that gas surrounding the candidate first hydrostatic core (FHSC), L1451-mm, and other previously detected single-dish continuum clumps has similar hierarchical structure; this suggests that different subregions of L1451 are fragmenting on the pathway to forming young stars. We determined that the three-dimensional morphology of the largest detectable dense-gas structures was relatively ellipsoidal compared with other CLASSy regions, which appeared more flattened at the largest scales. A virial analysis shows that the most centrally condensed dust structures are likely unstable against collapse. Additionally, we identify a new spherical, centrally condensed N{sub 2}H{sup +} feature that could be a new FHSC candidate. The overall results suggest that L1451 is a young region starting to form its generation of stars within turbulent, hierarchical structures.

• OSTI ID: 22869132
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 830; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
COSMIC DUST
DENSITY
DISPERSIONS
EMISSION
HYDROCYANIC ACID
HYDROGEN
HYDROSTATICS
MOLECULES
PROTOSTARS
STARS
THREE-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS
VELOCITY