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Register a new userA catalogue of dense cores and young stellar objects in the Lupus complex based on Herschel Gould Belt Survey observations
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The Herschel Gould Belt Survey key project mapped the bulk of nearby star-forming molecular clouds in five far-infrared bands with the aim of compiling complete census of prestellar cores and young, embedded protostars. In this paper, we present the catalogue of the dense cores and YSOs/protostars extracted from the Herschel maps of the Lupus I, III, and IV molecular clouds. The physical properties of the detected objects were derived by fitting their spectral energy distributions. A total of 532 dense cores, out of which 103 are presumably prestellar in nature, and 38 YSOs/protostars have been detected in the three clouds. Almost all the prestellar cores are associated with filaments against only about one third of the unbound cores and YSOs/protostars. Prestellar core candidates are found even in filaments that are on average thermally sub-critical and over a background column density lower than that measured in other star forming regions so far. The core mass function of the prestellar cores peaks between 0.2 and 0.3 solar masses and it is compatible with the log-normal shape found in other regions. Herschel data reveal several, previously undetected, protostars and new candidates of Class 0 and Class II with transitional disks. We estimate the evolutionary status of the YSOs/protostars using two independent indicators: the $alpha$ index and the fitting of the spectral energy distribution from near- to far-infrared wavelengths. For 70% of the objects, the evolutionary stages derived with the two methods are in agreement. Lupus is confirmed to be a very low-mass star-forming region, both in terms of the prestellar condensations and of the diffuse medium. Noticeably, in the Lupus clouds we have found star formation activity associated with interstellar medium at low column density, usually quiescent in other (more massive) star forming regions.
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We present Herschel SPIRE and PACS maps of the Cepheus Flare clouds L1157, L1172, L1228, L1241, and L1251, observed by the Herschel Gould Belt Survey (HGBS) of nearby star-forming molecular clouds. Through modified blackbody fits to the SPIRE and PACS data, we determine typical cloud column densities of 0.5-1.0 $times$ 10$^{21}$ cm$^{-2}$ and typical cloud temperatures of 14-15 K. Using the getsources identification algorithm, we extract 832 dense cores from the SPIRE and PACS data at 160-500 $mu$m. From placement in a mass vs. size diagram, we consider 303 to be candidate prestellar cores, and 178 of these to be robust prestellar cores. From an independent extraction of sources at 70 $mu$m, we consider 25 of the 832 dense cores to be protostellar. The distribution of background column densities coincident with candidate prestellar cores peaks at 2-4 $times$ 10$^{21}$ cm$^{-2}$. About half of the candidate prestellar cores in Cepheus may have formed due to the widespread fragmentation expected to occur within filaments of transcritical line mass. The lognormal robust prestellar core mass function (CMF) drawn from all five Cepheus clouds peaks at 0.56 M$_{odot}$ and has a width of $sim$0.5 dex, similar to that of Aquilas CMF. Indeed, the width of Cepheus aggregate CMF is similar to the stellar system Initial Mass Function (IMF). The similarity of CMF widths in different clouds and the system IMF suggests a common, possibly turbulent origin for seeding the fluctuations that evolve into prestellar cores and stars.
We present and discuss the results of the Herschel Gould Belt survey observations in a ~11 deg^2 area of the Aquila molecular cloud complex at d~260 pc, imaged with the SPIRE/PACS cameras from 70 to 500 micron. We identify a complete sample of starless dense cores and embedded protostars in this region, and analyze their global properties and spatial distributions. We find a total of 651 starless cores, ~60% of which are gravitationally bound prestellar cores, and they will likely form stars in the future. We also detect 58 protostellar cores. The core mass function (CMF) derived for the prestellar cores is very similar in shape to the stellar initial mass function (IMF), supporting the earlier view that there is a close physical link between the IMF and the CMF. The global shift in mass scale observed between the CMF and the IMF is consistent with a typical star formation efficiency of ~40%. By comparing the numbers of starless cores to the number of young stellar objects, we estimate that the lifetime of prestellar cores is ~1 Myr. We find a strong correlation between the spatial distribution of prestellar cores and the densest filaments. About 90% of the Herschel-identified prestellar cores are located above a background column density corresponding to A_V~7, and ~75% of them lie within filamentary structures with supercritical masses per unit length >~16 M_sun/pc. These findings support a picture wherein the cores making up the peak of the CMF (and probably responsible for the base of the IMF) result primarily from the gravitational fragmentation of marginally supercritical filaments. Given that filaments appear to dominate the mass budget of dense gas at A_V>7, our findings also suggest that the physics of prestellar core formation within filaments is responsible for a characteristic efficiency SFR/M_dense ~5+-2 x 10^-8 yr^-1 for the star formation process in dense gas.
We present a catalogue of dense cores in a $sim 4^circtimes2^circ$ field of the Taurus star-forming region, inclusive of the L1495 cloud, derived from Herschel SPIRE and PACS observations in the 70 $mu$m, 160 $mu$m, 250 $mu$m, 350 $mu$m, and 500 $mu$m continuum bands. Estimates of mean dust temperature and total mass are derived using modified blackbody fits to the spectral energy distributions. We detect 525 starless cores of which $sim10$-20% are gravitationally bound and therefore presumably prestellar. Our census of unbound objects is $sim85$% complete for $M>0.015,M_odot$ in low density regions ($A_Vstackrel{<}{_sim}5$ mag), while the bound (prestellar) subset is $sim85$% complete for $M>0.1,M_odot$ overall. The prestellar core mass function (CMF) is consistent with lognormal form, resembling the stellar system initial mass function, as has been reported previously. All of the inferred prestellar cores lie on filamentary structures whose column densities exceed the expected threshold for filamentary collapse, in agreement with previous reports. Unlike the prestellar CMF, the unbound starless CMF is not lognormal, but instead is consistent with a power-law form below $0.3,M_odot$ and shows no evidence for a low-mass turnover. It resembles previously reported mass distributions for CO clumps at low masses ($Mstackrel{<}{_sim}0.3,M_odot$). The volume density PDF, however, is accurately lognormal except at high densities. It is consistent with the effects of self-gravity on magnetized supersonic turbulence. The only significant deviation from lognormality is a high-density tail which can be attributed unambiguously to prestellar cores.
We report on the Herschel Gould Belt survey (HGBS) of ChaII, focusing on the detection of Class I to III young stellar objects (YSOs). We aim at characterizing the circumstellar material around these YSOs and understanding which disk parameters are most likely constrained by the new HGBS data. We recovered 29 out of the 63 known YSOs in ChaII with a detection in at least one of the PACS/SPIRE pass-bands: 3 Class I YSOs (i.e.,100%), 1 Flat source (i.e., 50%), 21 Class II objects (i.e., 55%), 3 Class III objects (i.e, 16%) and the unclassified source IRAS 12522-7640. We explore PACS/SPIRE colors of this sample and present modeling of their SEDs using the RADMC-2D radiative transfer code. We find that YSO colors are confined in specific regions of PACS/SPIRE color-color diagrams. These color ranges are expected to be only marginally contaminated by extragalactic sources and field stars and, hence, provide a useful YSO selection tool when applied altogether. We were able to model the SED of 26 out of the 29 detected YSOs. We discuss the degeneracy/limitations of our SED fitting results and adopt the Bayesian method to estimate the probability of different values for the derived disk parameters. The Cha II YSOs present typical disk inner radii around 0.1 AU. The lower limit to Rc is typically around 50 AU. The lower limits to Mdisk are proportional to the stellar masses with a typical 0.3% ratio, i.e., in the range estimated in the literature for young Class II stars and brown dwarfs across a broad range of stellar masses. The estimated flaring angles, although very uncertain, point towards rather flat disks (1+phi less than 1.2), as found for low-mass M-type YSO samples in other star forming regions. Thus, our results support the idea that disk properties show a dependence on stellar properties.
(Abridged) In this paper, we present analyses of images taken with the Herschel ESA satellite from 70mu to 500mu. We first constructed column density and dust temperature maps. Next, we identified compact cores in the maps, and characterize the cores using modified blackbody fits to their SEDs: we identified 684 starless cores, of which 199 are bound and potential prestellar cores, and 132 protostars. We also matched the Herschel-identified young stars with GAIA sources to model distance variations across the Perseus cloud. We measure a linear gradient function with right ascension and declination for the entire cloud. From the SED fits, mass and temperature of cores were derived. The core mass function can be modelled with a log-normal distribution that peaks at 0.82~$M_sun$ suggesting a star formation efficiency of 0.30. The high-mass tail can be modelled with a power law of slope $sim-2.32$, close to the Salpeters value. We also identify the filamentary structure of Perseus, confirming that stars form preferentially in filaments. We find that the majority of filaments where star formation is ongoing are transcritical against their own internal gravity because their linear masses are below the critical limit of 16~$M_sun$pc$^{-1}$ above which we expect filaments to collapse. We find a possible explanation for this result, showing that a filament with a linear mass as low as 8~$M_sun$pc$^{-1}$ can be already unstable. We confirm a linear relation between star formation efficiency and slope of dust probability density function and a similar relation is also seen with the core formation efficiency. We derive a lifetime for the prestellar core phase of $1.69pm0.52$~Myr for Perseus but different regions have a wide range in prestellar core fractions, hint that star-formation has started only recently in some clumps. We also derive a free-fall time for prestellar cores of 0.16~Myr.
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