THE BLAST SURVEY OF THE VELA MOLECULAR CLOUD: DYNAMICAL PROPERTIES OF THE DENSE CORES IN VELA-D
- Physics Department, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, Box 23343, UPR station, San Juan (Puerto Rico)
- Department of Physics, University of Arizona, 1118 E. Fourth Street, P.O. Box 210081, Tucson, AZ 85721 (United States)
- LERMA-LRA, UMR 8112 du CNRS, Observatoire de Paris, Ecole Normale Superieure, UPMC and UCP, 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05 (France)
- Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario-INAF, via Fosso del Cavaliere 100, I-00133 Roma (Italy)
- Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma-INAF, Via Frascati 33, I-00040 Monteporzio Catone, Roma (Italy)
- Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri-INAF, Largo E. Fermi 5, I-50125, Firenze (Italy)
- Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 60 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3H8 (Canada)
- Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita del Salento, CP 193, I-73100 Lecce (Italy)
The Vela-D region, according to the nomenclature given by Murphy and May, of the star-forming complex known as the Vela molecular ridge (VMR), has recently been analyzed in detail by Olmi, who studied the physical properties of 141 pre- and proto-stellar cold dust cores, detected by the Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) during a much larger (55 deg{sup 2}) Galactic plane survey encompassing the whole VMR. This survey's primary goal was to identify the coldest dense dust cores possibly associated with the earliest phases of star formation. In this work, the dynamical state of the Vela-D cores is analyzed. Comparison to dynamical masses of a sub-sample of the Vela-D cores estimated from the {sup 13}CO survey of Elia is complicated by the fact that the {sup 13}CO linewidths are likely to trace the lower density intercore material, in addition to the dense gas associated with the compact cores observed by BLAST. In fact, the total internal pressure of these cores, if estimated using the {sup 13}CO linewidths, appears to be higher than the cloud ambient pressure. If this were the case, then self-gravity and surface pressure would be insufficient to bind these cores and an additional source of external confinement (e.g., magnetic field pressure) would be required. However, if one attempts to scale down the {sup 13}CO linewidths, according to the observations of high-density tracers in a small sample of sources, then most proto-stellar cores would be effectively gravitationally bound.
- OSTI ID:
- 21471273
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 723, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/723/2/1065; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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