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Published February 20, 2010 | Published
Journal Article Open

The Mass Distribution of Starless and Protostellar Cores in Gould Belt Clouds

Abstract

Using data from the SCUBA Legacy Catalogue (850 μm) and Spitzer Space Telescope (3.6-70 μm), we explore dense cores in the Ophiuchus, Taurus, Perseus, Serpens, and Orion molecular clouds. We develop a new method to discriminate submillimeter cores found by Submillimeter Common-User Bolometer Array (SCUBA) as starless or protostellar, using point source photometry from Spitzer wide field surveys. First, we identify infrared sources with red colors associated with embedded young stellar objects (YSOs). Second, we compare the positions of these YSO candidates to our submillimeter cores. With these identifications, we construct new, self-consistent starless and protostellar core mass functions (CMFs) for the five clouds. We find best-fit slopes to the high-mass end of the CMFs of –1.26 ± 0.20, –1.22 ± 0.06, –0.95 ± 0.20, and –1.67 ± 0.72 for Ophiuchus, Taurus, Perseus, and Orion, respectively. Broadly, these slopes are each consistent with the –1.35 power-law slope of the Salpeter initial mass function at higher masses, but suggest some differences. We examine a variety of trends between these CMF shapes and their parent cloud properties, potentially finding a correlation between the high-mass slope and core temperature. We also find a trend between core mass and effective size, but we are very limited by sensitivity. We make similar comparisons between core mass and size with visual extinction (for A_V ≥ 3) and find no obvious trends. We also predict the numbers and mass distributions of cores that future surveys with SCUBA-2 may detect in each of these clouds.

Additional Information

© 2010 American Astronomical Society. Print publication: Issue 2 (2010 February 20); received 2009 October 28; accepted for publication 2010 January 6; published 2010 January 28. This work was possible with funding from a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada CGS award and a Discovery Grant. The authors thank the anonymous referee for their comments and suggestions toward this paper. The authors also thank the Taurus Spitzer Team and the Orion Spitzer Team for contributing infrared data prior to publication. S.I.S. thanks J. Jørgensen and M. Enoch for their kind time and attention to various inquiries. As well, the authors thank E. Ledwosinska, T. MacKenzie, H. Kirk, and D. Johnstone for their work in creating the SLC and N. Evans II, P. Harvey, M. Dunham, T. Huard, T. Brooke, M. Enoch, N. Chapman, L. Cieza, and K. Stapelfeldt for their work in creating the c2d catalog. The James ClerkMaxwell Telescope is operated by The Joint Astronomy Centre on behalf of the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, and the National Research Council of Canada. This work is based (in part) on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation.

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