A PPMAP analysis of the filamentary structures in Ophiuchus L1688 and L1689

Abstract

We use the PPMAP (Point Process MAPping) algorithm to re-analyse the \textit{Herschel} and SCUBA-2 observations of the L1688 and L1689 sub-regions of the Ophiuchus molecular cloud. PPMAP delivers maps with high resolution (here $14^{\prime \prime }$, corresponding to $\sim 0.01\mathrm{pc}$ at $\sim 140\mathrm{pc}$), by using the observations at their native resolutions. PPMAP also delivers more accurate dust optical depths, by distinguishing dust of different types and at different temperatures. The filaments and prestellar cores almost all lie in regions with $N_{{\mathrm{H}}_2}\gtrsim 7\times 10^{21}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}$ (corresponding to $A_{{}_{\mathrm{V}}}\gtrsim 7$). The dust temperature, $T$, tends to be correlated with the dust opacity index, $\beta$, with low $T$ and low $\beta$ tend concentrated in the interiors of filaments. The one exception to this tendency is a section of filament in L1688 that falls -- in projection -- between the two B stars, S1 and HD147889; here $T$ and $\beta$ are relatively high, and there is compelling evidence that feedback from these two stars has heated and compressed the filament. Filament {\sc fwhm}s are typically in the range $0.10\mathrm{pc}$ to $0.15\mathrm{pc}$. Most filaments have line densities in the range $25{\mathrm{M}}_{{}_{\odot }}\mathrm{p}{\mathrm{c}}^{-1}$ to $65{\mathrm{M}}_{{}_{\odot }}\mathrm{p}{\mathrm{c}}^{-1}$. If their only support is thermal gas pressure, and the gas is at the canonical temperature of $10\mathrm{K}$, the filaments are highly supercritical. However, there is some evidence from ammonia observations that the gas is significantly warmer than this, and we cannot rule out the possibility of additional support from turbulence and/or magnetic fields. On the basis of their spatial distribution, we argue that most of the starless cores are likely to disperse (rather than evolving to become prestellar).

22 pages, 18 figures, Accepted for publication by MNRAS March 2021

References in corpus (6)

• SCUBA-2: iterative map-making with the Sub-Millimetre User Reduction Facility
• The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope Legacy Survey of Nearby Star-forming Regions in the Gould Belt
• On the Distance to the Ophiuchus Star-Forming Region
• A SCUBA survey of L1689 - The dog that didn't bark
• The CARMA-NRO Orion Survey: The filamentary structure as seen in C${}^{18}$O emission
• The Green Bank Ammonia Survey: A Virial Analysis of Gould Belt Clouds in Data Release 1

Cited by in corpus (7)

• The widths of magnetised filaments in molecular clouds
• Filaments in the OMC-3 cloud and uncertainties in estimates of filament profiles
• HP2 Survey V. Ophiuchus: Filament formation in a dispersing cloud complex
• The JCMT Gould Belt Survey: radiative heating by OB stars
• Line emission from filaments in molecular clouds
• The JCMT Gould Belt Survey Complete Core Catalogue: Core mass function variations between nearby molecular clouds
• Modelling of dust emission of a filament in the Taurus molecular cloud