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Register a new userFormation of the Musca filament: Evidence for asymmetries in the accretion flow due to a cloud-cloud collision
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Context. Dense molecular filaments are ubiquituous in the interstellar medium, yet their internal physical conditions and formation mechanism remain debated. Aims. We study the kinematics and physical conditions in the Musca filament and the Chamaeleon-Musca complex to constrain the physics of filament formation. Methods. We produced CO(2-1) isotopologue maps with the APEX telescope that cut through the Musca filament. We further study a NANTEN2 $^{12}$CO(1-0) map of the Musca cloud and the HI emission of the Chamaeleon-Musca complex. Results. The Musca cloud contains multiple velocity components. Radiative transfer modelling of the CO emission indicates that the Musca filament consists of a cold ($sim$10 K), dense (n$_{H_2}sim$10$^4$ cm$^{-3}$) crest, which is best described with a cylindrical geometry. Connected to the crest, a separate gas component at T$sim$15 K and n$_{H_2}sim$10$^3$ cm$^{-3}$ is found, the so-called strands. The filament crest has a transverse velocity gradient that is linked to the kinematics of the nearby ambient cloud. Studying the large scale kinematics, we find coherence of the asymmetric kinematics from the 50 pc HI cloud down to the Musca filament. We also report a strong [C$^{18}$O]/[$^{13}$CO] abundance drop by an order of magnitude from the filament crest to the strands over a distance $<$ 0.2 pc in a weak far-ultraviolet (FUV) field. Conclusions. The dense Musca filament crest is a long-lived (several crossing times), dynamic structure that can form stars in the near future because of continuous mass accretion. This mass accretion appears to be triggered by a HI cloud-cloud collision, which bends the magnetic field around dense filaments. This bending of the magnetic field is then responsible for the observed asymmetric accretion scenario of the Musca filament, which is, for instance, seen as a V-shape in the position-velocity (PV) diagram.
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Observations with the Herschel Space Telescope have established that most of the star forming gas is organised in interstellar filaments, a finding that is supported by numerical simulations of the supersonic interstellar medium (ISM) where dense filamentary structures are ubiquitous. We aim to understand the formation of these dense structures by performing observations covering the $^{12}$CO(4-3), $^{12}$CO(3-2), and various CO(2-1) isotopologue lines of the Musca filament, using the APEX telescope. The observed CO intensities and line ratios cannot be explained by PDR (photodissociation region) emission because of the low ambient far-UV field that is strongly constrained by the non-detections of the [C II] line at 158 $mu$m and the [O I] line at 63 $mu$m, observed with the upGREAT receiver on SOFIA, as well as a weak [C I] 609 $mu$m line detected with APEX. We propose that the observations are consistent with a scenario in which shock excitation gives rise to warm and dense gas close to the highest column density regions in the Musca filament. Using shock models, we find that the CO observations can be consistent with excitation by J-type low-velocity shocks. A qualitative comparison of the observed CO spectra with synthetic observations of dynamic filament formation simulations shows a good agreement with the signature of a filament accretion shock that forms a cold and dense filament from a converging flow. The Musca filament is thus found to be dense molecular post-shock gas. Filament accretion shocks that dissipate the supersonic kinetic energy of converging flows in the ISM may thus play a prominent role in the evolution of cold and dense filamentary structures.
Filaments play a central role in the molecular clouds evolution, but their internal dynamical properties remain poorly characterized. To further explore the physical state of these structures, we have investigated the kinematic properties of the Musca cloud. We have sampled the main axis of this filamentary cloud in $^{13}$CO and C$^{18}$O (2--1) lines using APEX observations. The different line profiles in Musca shows that this cloud presents a continuous and quiescent velocity field along its $sim$6.5 pc of length. With an internal gas kinematics dominated by thermal motions (i.e., $sigma_{NT}/c_slesssim1$) and large-scale velocity gradients, these results reveal Musca as the longest velocity-coherent, sonic-like object identified so far in the ISM. The transonic properties of Musca present a clear departure from the predicted supersonic velocity dispersions expected in the Larsons velocity dispersion-size relationship, and constitute the first observational evidence of a filament fully decoupled from the turbulent regime over multi-parsec scales.
We present new large field observations of molecular clouds with NANTEN2 toward the super star cluster NGC3603 in the transitions 12CO(J=2-1, J=1-0) and 13CO(J=2-1, J=1-0). We suggest that two molecular clouds at 13 km s-1 and 28 km s-1 are associated with NGC3603 as evidenced by higher temperatures toward the H II region as well as morphological correspondence. The mass of the clouds is too small to gravitationally bind them, given their relative motion of ~20 km s-1. We suggest that the two clouds collided with each other a Myr ago to trigger the formation of the super star cluster. This scenario is able to explain the origin of the highest mass stellar population in the cluster which is as young as a Myr and is segregated within the central sub-pc of the cluster. This is the second super star cluster along side Westerlund2 where formation may have been triggered by a cloud-cloud collision.
We have carried out a new kinematical analysis of the molecular gas in the Sh2-233 region by using the CO $J$ = 2-1 data taken at $sim$0.5 pc resolution. The molecular gas consists of a filamentary cloud of 5-pc length with 1.5-pc width where two dense cloud cores are embedded. The filament lies between two clouds, which have a velocity difference of 2.6 km s$^{-1}$ and are extended over $sim$5 pc. We frame a scenario that the two clouds are colliding with each other and compressed the gas between them to form the filament in $sim$0.5 Myr which is perpendicular to the collision. It is likely that the collision formed not only the filamentary cloud but also the two dense cores. One of the dense cores is associated with the high-mass protostellar candidate IRAS 05358+3543, a representative high-mass protostar. In the monolithic collapse scheme of high mass star formation, a compact dense core of 100 $M_odot$ within a volume of 0.1 pc radius is assumed as the initial condition, whereas the formation of such a core remained unexplained in the previous works. We argue that the proposed collision is a step which efficiently collects the gas of 100 $M_odot$ into 0.1 pc radius. This lends support for that the cloud-cloud collision is an essential process in forming the compact high-mass dense core, IRAS 05358+3543.
Understanding the mechanism of O star formation is one of the most important issues in current astrophysics. It is also an issue of keen interest how O stars affect their surroundings and trigger secondary star formation. An H,emissiontype{II} region RCW79 is one of the typical Spitzer bubbles alongside of RCW120. New observations of CO $J=$ 1--0 emission with Mopra and NANTEN2 revealed that molecular clouds are associated with RCW79 in four velocity components over a velocity range of 20 km s$^{-1}$. We hypothesize that two of the clouds collided with each other and the collision triggered the formation of 12 O stars inside of the bubble and the formation of 54 low mass young stellar objects along the bubble wall. The collision is supported by observational signatures of bridges connecting different velocity components in the colliding clouds. The whole collision process happened in a timescale of $sim$1 Myr. RCW79 has a larger size by a factor of 30 in the projected area than RCW120 with a single O star, and the large size favored formation of the 12 O stars due to the larger accumulated gas in the collisional shock compression.
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