A Chain of Dark Clouds in Projection Against the Galactic Center

Abstract

In the J, H, and Ks bands survey of the the Galactic Center region over an area of 2deg x 5deg, we have found many dark clouds, among which a distinguished chain of dark clouds can be identified with a quiescent CO cloud. The distances of the clouds is estimated to be 3.2-4.2 kpc, corresponding to the Norma arm by our new method to determine distance to dark clouds using the cumulative number of stars against J-Ks colors. Adopting these estimated distances, the size is about 70 pc in length and the total mass of the cloud is 6x10^4 M_solar. Three compact HII regions harbor in the cloud, indicating that star forming activities are going on at the cores of the quiescent CO cloud on the spiral arm.

13 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in PASJ

References in corpus (3)

• Interstellar Extinction Law in the J, H, and Ks Bands toward the Galactic Center
• Three-Dimensional Distribution of the ISM in the Milky Way Galaxy: II. The Molecular Gas Disk
• The Distance to the Galactic Center Derived From Infrared Photometry of Bulge Red Clump Stars

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• The JWST-NIRCam View of Sagittarius C. II. Evidence for Magnetically Dominated HII Regions in the CMZ
• Maser Emission toward the Infrared Dark Cloud G359.94+0.17 Seen in Silhouette against the Galactic Center