A Morphological Classification of 18190 Molecular Clouds Identified in ${}^{12}$CO Data from the MWISP Survey

Abstract

We attempt to visually classify the morphologies of 18190 molecular clouds, which are identified in the ${}^{12}$CO(1-0) spectral line data over $\sim$ 450 deg${}^2$ of the second Galactic quadrant from the Milky Way Imaging Scroll Painting project (MWISP). Using the velocity-integrated intensity maps of the ${}^{12}$CO(1-0) emission, molecular clouds are first divided into unresolved and resolved ones. The resolved clouds are further classified as non-filaments or filaments. Among the 18190 molecular clouds, $\sim$ 25 $\%$ are unresolved, $\sim$ 64$\%$ are non-filaments, and $\sim$ 11$\%$ are filaments. In the terms of the integrated flux of ${}^{12}$CO(1-0) spectra of the whole 18190 molecular clouds, $\sim$ 90$\%$ are from filaments, $\sim$ 9$\%$ are from non-filaments, and the rest $\sim$ 1$\%$ are from unresolved sources. Although non-filaments are dominant in the number of the discrete molecular clouds, filaments are the main contributor of ${}^{12}$CO emission flux. We also present the number distributions of physical parameters of the molecular clouds in our catalog, including their angular sizes, velocity spans, peak intensities of ${}^{12}$CO(1-0) emission, and ${}^{12}$CO(1-0) total fluxes. We find that there is a systematic difference between the angular sizes of the non-filaments and filaments, with the filaments tending to have larger angular scales. The H${}_2$ column densities of them are not significantly different. We also discuss the observational effects, such as those induced by the finite spatial resolution, beam dilution and line-of-sight projection, on the morphological classification of molecular clouds in our sample.

17 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, appendix: 7 figures, accepted for publication in ApJS

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