FUNS - Filaments, the Universal Nursery of Stars. I. Physical Properties of Filaments and Dense Cores in L1478

  • Published : 2018.05.08

Abstract

Formation of filaments and subsequent dense cores in ISM is one of the essential questions to address in star formation. To investigate this scenario in detail, we recently started a molecular line survey namely 'Filaments, the Universal Nursery of Stars (FUNS)' toward nearby filamentary clouds in Gould Belt using TRAO 14m single dish telescope equipped with a 16 multi-beam array. In the present work, we report the first look results of kinematics of a low mass star forming region L1478 of California molecular cloud. This region is found to be consisting of long filaments with a hub-filament structure. We performed On-The-Fly mapping observations covering ~1.1 square degree area of this region using C18O(1-0) as a low density tracer and 0.13 square degree area using N2H+(1-0) as a high density tracer, respectively. CS (2-1) and SO (32-21) were also used simultaneously to map ~290 square arcminute area of this region. We identified 10 filaments applying Dendrogram technique to C18O data-cube and 13 dense cores using FellWalker and N2H+ data set. Basic physical properties of filaments such as mass, length, width, velocity field, and velocity dispersion are derived. It is found that filaments in L~1478 are velocity coherent and supercritical. Especially the filaments which are highly supercritical are found to have dense cores detected in N2H+. Non-thermal velocity dispersions derived from C18O and N2H+ suggest that most of the dense cores are subsonic or transonic while the surrounding filaments are transonic or supersonic. We concluded that filaments in L~1478 are gravitationally unstable which might collapse to form dense cores and stars. We also suggest that formation mechanism can be different in individual filament depending on its morphology and environment.

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