Polarimetric study of the interstellar medium in Taurus Dark Clouds
Thesis/Dissertation
·
OSTI ID:5800188
An optical linear polarimetric survey was completed for more than 300 stars in an area of 6.5/sup 0/ x 10/sup 0/ toward the Taurus Dark Clouds Complex. It was found that the orientation of the magnetic field is roughly perpendicular to the elongation direction of the dust lanes, indicating cloud contraction along the magnetic field lines. The distance to the front edge of the dark clouds in Taurus is determined to be 126 pc. There is only insignificant amount of obscuring material between the cloud complex and the Sun. Besides the polarization data, the reddenings of about 250 stars were also obtained from the UBV photometry. The mean polarization to reddening ratio in the Taurus region is 4.6, which is similar to that of the general interstellar matter. The wavelengths of maximum polarization were determined for 30 stars in Taurus. They show an average value of lambda/sub max/ = 0.57 ..mu..m, which is only slightly higher than the mean value of the general interstellar medium, lambda/sub max/ = 0.55 ..mu..m. A few stars that show higher values of lambda/sub max/ are found near the small isolated regions of very high extinction. One such highly obscured small region where very complex long chain molecules have been discovered in the ratio spectra, is the Taurus Molecular Cloud 1.
- Research Organization:
- Texas Univ., Austin (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 5800188
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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