The distribution of magnetic field strength in Orion A region

  • Hwang, Jihye (Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute) ;
  • Kim, Jongsoo (Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute)
  • Published : 2019.04.10

Abstract

Magnetic fields play an important role in supporting molecular clouds against gravitational collapse. The measured magnetic field strengths in molecular clods enable us to see the effect of magnetic fields in star-forming regions. People have used the Chandrasekhar and Fermi (CF) method to estimate magnetic field strength from observational quantities of molecular cloud density, turbulent velocity and polarization angle dispersion. However, previous studies obtained just one magnetic field strength over the quite large region of a molecular cloud by using the CF method. We here suggest a way to estimate magnetic field strength distribution in Orion A region. We used 450 and 850-micron polarization data of James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). Magnetic field strengths were estimated in two wavelengths with 4 pixel resolutions of 16, 20, 24 and 28". Through statistical analysis, we proved the difference of magnetic field strengths between two wavelengths were caused by the difference of their beam sizes. Additionally, we calculated the radii of curvature of polarization segments to select a best pixel resolution for estimating the magnetic field distribution. The pixel resolution should be larger than a radius of curvature. We selected that 20 or 24" pixel resolutions are good choices towards Orion A region.

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