Dense cores and star formation in the giant molecular cloud Vela~C

Abstract

Context The Vela Molecular Ridge is one of the nearest (700 pc) giant molecular cloud (GMC) complexes hosting intermediate-mass (up to early B, late O stars) star formation, and is located in the outer Galaxy, inside the Galactic plane. Vela C is one of the GMCs making up the Vela Molecular Ridge, and exhibits both sub-regions of robust and sub-regions of more quiescent star formation activity, with both low- and intermediate(high)-mass star formation in progress. Aims We aim to study the individual and global properties of dense dust cores in Vela C, and aim to search for spatial variations in these properties which could be related to different environmental properties and/or evolutionary stages in the various sub-regions of Vela C. Methods We mapped the submillimetre (345 GHz) emission from vela C with LABOCA (beam size 19.2", spatial resolution ~0.07 pc at 700 pc) at the APEX telescope. We used the clump-finding algorithm CuTEx to identify the compact submillimetre sources. We also used SIMBA (250 GHz) observations, and Herschel and WISE ancillary data. The association with WISE red sources allowed the protostellar and starless cores to be separated, whereas the Herschel dataset allowed the dust temperature to be derived for a fraction of cores. The protostellar and starless core mass functions (CMFs) were constructed following two different approaches, achieving a mass completeness limit of 3.7 Msun. Results We retrieved 549 submillimetre cores, 316 of which are starless and mostly gravitationally bound (therefore prestellar in nature). Both the protostellar and the starless CMFs are consistent with the shape of a Salpeter initial mass function in the high-mass part of the distribution. Clustering of cores at scales of 1--6 pc is also found, hinting at fractionation of magnetised, turbulent gas.

arXiv comment21 pages, 19 figures, to be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics

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• FEEDBACK: a SOFIA Legacy Program to Study Stellar Feedback in Regions of Massive Star Formation
• ALMA-IMF. V. Prestellar and protostellar core populations in the W43 cloud complex
• The contribution of winds of star clusters to the Galactic cosmic-ray population
• Strong dependence of the physical properties of cores on spatial resolution in observations and simulations
• The SOFIA FEEDBACK Legacy Survey: Dynamics and mass ejection in the bipolar HII region RCW 36
• The highly variable time evolution of star-forming cores identified with dendrograms
• The High-Mass Protostellar Population of a Massive Infrared Dark Cloud
• The three-dimensional structure of Galactic molecular cloud complexes out to 2.5 kpc
• Stellar Properties for a Comprehensive Collection of Star Forming Regions in the SDSS APOGEE-2 Survey
• Kinetic tomography of the Galactic plane within 1.25 kiloparsecs from the Sun. The interstellar flows revealed by HI and CO line emission and 3D dust
• Properties of the dense cores and filamentary structures in the Vela C molecular cloud
• FEDReD III : Unraveling the 3D structure of Vela
• Star Formation in a Strongly Magnetized Cloud
• Cluster aggregates surrounding Pismis 5 in the Vela Molecular Ridge
• Revisiting The Mass-Size Relation Of Structures In Molecular Clouds
• A possible far-ultraviolet flux-dependent core mass function in NGC 6357
• Scale-dependent surface and volume density properties of filaments in molecular clouds
• A Core Mass Function Indistinguishable from the Salpeter Stellar Initial Mass Function Using 1000 au Resolution ALMA Observations
• Galaxy Activity, Torus and Outflow Survey (GATOS) X: Molecular gas clumpiness under the influence of AGN