The width of Herschel filaments varies with distance
Abstract
Context. Filamentary structures in nearby molecular clouds have been found to exhibit a characteristic width of 0.1 pc, as observed in dust emission. Understanding the origin of this universal width has become a topic of central importance in the study of molecular cloud structure and the early stages of star formation. Aims. We investigate how the recovered widths of filaments depend on the distance from the observer by using previously published results from the Herschel Gould Belt Survey. Methods. We obtained updated estimates on the distances to nearby molecular clouds observed with Herschel by using recent results based on 3D dust extinction mapping and Gaia. We examined the widths of filaments from individual clouds separately, as opposed to treating them as a single population. We used these per-cloud filament widths to search for signs of variation amongst the clouds of the previously published study. Results. We find a significant dependence of the mean per-cloud filament width with distance. The distribution of mean filament widths for nearby clouds is incompatible with that of farther away clouds. The mean per-cloud widths scale with distance approximately as 4−5 times the beam size. We examine the effects of resolution by performing a convergence study of a filament profile in the Herschel image of the Taurus Molecular Cloud. We find that resolution can severely affect the shapes of radial profiles over the observed range of distances. Conclusions. We conclude that the data are inconsistent with 0.1 pc being the universal characteristic width of filaments.
Additional Information
© ESO 2022. Received: 22 September 2021 Accepted: 15 November 2021. We thank K. Tassis and R. Skalidis for providing helpful comments. G.V.P. acknowledges support by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant #HST-HF2-51444.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. S.E.C. acknowledges support by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2106607. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 851435). R.J.S. gratefully acknowledges an STFC Ernest Rutherford fellowship (grant ST/N00485X/1). D.S. acknowledges support of the Bonn-Cologne Graduate School, which is funded through the German Excellence Initiative as well as funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) via the Collaborative Research Center SFB 956 "Conditions and Impact of Star Formation" (subproject C6). This research has made use of data from the Herschel Gould Belt survey (HGBS) project (http://gouldbelt-herschel.cea.fr). The HGBS is a Herschel Key Programme jointly carried out by SPIRE Specialist Astronomy Group 3 (SAG 3), scientists of several institutes in the PACS Consortium (CEA Saclay, INAF-IFSI Rome and INAF-Arcetri, KU Leuven, MPIA Heidelberg), and scientists of the Herschel Science Center (HSC).Errata
The width of Herschel filaments varies with distance (Corrigendum). G. V. Panopoulou, S. E. Clark, A. Hacar, F. Heitsch, J. Kainulainen, E. Ntormousi, D. Seifried and R. J. Smith. A&A, 663 (2022) C1; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202142281eAttached Files
Published - aa42281-21.pdf
Accepted Version - 2111.08125.pdf
Erratum - aa42281e-21.pdf
Files
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 113286
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20220204-679553000
- HST-HF2-51444.001-A
- NASA Hubble Fellowship
- NAS5-26555
- NASA
- AST-2106607
- NSF
- 851435
- European Research Council (ERC)
- ST/N00485X/1
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- SFB 956
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
- Created
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2022-02-07Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2022-07-12Created from EPrint's last_modified field