Herschel Gould Belt Survey Observations of Dense Cores in the Cepheus Flare Clouds

Abstract

We present Herschel SPIRE and PACS maps of the Cepheus Flare clouds L1157, L1172, L1228, L1241, and L1251, observed by the Herschel Gould Belt Survey (HGBS) of nearby star-forming molecular clouds. Through modified blackbody fits to the SPIRE and PACS data, we determine typical cloud column densities of 0.5-1.0 $\times$ 10${}^{21}$ cm${}^{-2}$ and typical cloud temperatures of 14-15 K. Using the getsources identification algorithm, we extract 832 dense cores from the SPIRE and PACS data at 160-500 $\mu$m. From placement in a mass vs. size diagram, we consider 303 to be candidate prestellar cores, and 178 of these to be "robust" prestellar cores. From an independent extraction of sources at 70 $\mu$m, we consider 25 of the 832 dense cores to be protostellar. The distribution of background column densities coincident with candidate prestellar cores peaks at 2-4 $\times$ 10${}^{21}$ cm${}^{-2}$. About half of the candidate prestellar cores in Cepheus may have formed due to the widespread fragmentation expected to occur within filaments of "transcritical" line mass. The lognormal robust prestellar core mass function (CMF) drawn from all five Cepheus clouds peaks at 0.56 M${}_{\odot }$ and has a width of $\sim$0.5 dex, similar to that of Aquila's CMF. Indeed, the width of Cepheus' aggregate CMF is similar to the stellar system Initial Mass Function (IMF). The similarity of CMF widths in different clouds and the system IMF suggests a common, possibly turbulent origin for seeding the fluctuations that evolve into prestellar cores and stars.

36 pages, 21 figures, 2 online text tables (not yet included here), accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

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Cited by in corpus (20)

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• On the typical width of Herschel filaments
• Turbulence, Coherence and Collapse: Three Phases for Core Evolution
• Two-component Magnetic Field along the Line of Sight to the Perseus Molecular Cloud: Contribution of the Foreground Taurus Molecular Cloud
• JOYS: Disentangling the warm and cold material in the high-mass IRAS 23385+6053 cluster
• Conformational isomerism of methyl formate: new detections of the higher-energy trans conformer and theoretical insights
• HCN/HNC chemistry in shocks: a study of L1157-B1 with ASAI
• Alignment of dense molecular core morphology and velocity gradients with ambient magnetic fields
• The Distribution of UV Radiation Field in the Molecular Clouds of Gould Belt
• Probing the filamentary nature of star formation in the California giant molecular cloud
• A Survey of Deuterated Ammonia in the Cepheus Star-Forming Region L1251
• Tracing the magnetic field morphology of the LDN 1172/1174 cloud complex
• The Effelsberg survey of FU Orionis and EX Lupi objects I. -- Host environments of FUors/EXors traced by NH${}_3$
• Prestellar Cores in Turbulent Clouds: Properties of Critical Cores
• The JCMT Gould Belt Survey Complete Core Catalogue: Core mass function variations between nearby molecular clouds
• On volume density and star formation in nearby molecular clouds
• Scale-dependent surface and volume density properties of filaments in molecular clouds
• A complete survey of filaments in Cygnus X