A Herschel study of the properties of starless cores in the Polaris Flare dark cloud region using PACS and SPIRE

D. Ward-Thompson (1) , J. M. Kirk , P. André (2) , P. Saraceno (3) , P. Didelon (4) , V. Könyves , N. Schneider (4) , A. Abergel (5) , J. -P. Baluteau (6) , J. -Ph. Bernard (7) , Sylvain Bontemps (8, 9, 10, 11) , L. Cambrésy , P. Cox , J. Di Francesco (12) , A. M. Di Giorgio , M. Griffin (1) , P. Hargrave , M. Huang (13) , J. Z. Li (13) , P. Martin (14) , A. Men'Shchikov (4) , V. Minier (4, 15) , S. Molinari (3) , F. Motte (4, 15) , G. Olofsson (16) , S. Pezzuto (3) , D. Russeil (6) , M. Sauvage (4) , B. Sibthorpe (17) , L. Spinoglio (18) , L. Testi (19) , G. White (20) , C. Wilson (21) , A. Woodcraft (17) , Annie Zavagno (6, 22)

1 School of Physics and Astronomy [Cardiff]
2 LINA - Laboratoire d'Informatique de Nantes Atlantique
3 IFSI - Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario
4 AIM (UMR7158 / UMR_E_9005 / UM_112) - Astrophysique Interprétation Modélisation
5 IAS - Institut d'astrophysique spatiale
6 LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille
7 CESR - Centre d'étude spatiale des rayonnements
8 LAB - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux [Pessac]
9 OASU - Observatoire aquitain des sciences de l'univers
10 UB - Université Sciences et Technologies - Bordeaux 1
11 L3AB - Laboratoire d'astrodynamique, d'astrophysique et d'aéronomie de bordeaux
12 Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics
13 NAOC - National Astronomical Observatories [Beijing]
14 CITA
15 IRFU - Institut de Recherches sur les lois Fondamentales de l'Univers
16 Stockholm University
17 ROE - Royal Observatory Edinburgh
18 ARENA - Antarctic Research a European Network for Astrophysics
19 ESO - European Southern Observatory
20 RAL - STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
21 University of Exeter
22 OAMP - Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence

The Polaris Flare cloud region contains a great deal of extended emission. It is at high declination and high Galactic latitude. It was previously seen strongly in IRAS Cirrus emission at 100 microns. We have detected it with both PACS and SPIRE on Herschel. We see filamentary and low-level structure. We identify the five densest cores within this structure. We present the results of a temperature, mass and density analysis of these cores. We compare their observed masses to their virial masses, and see that in all cases the observed masses lie close to the lower end of the range of estimated virial masses. Therefore, we cannot say whether they are gravitationally bound prestellar cores. Nevertheless, these are the best candidates to be potentialprestellar cores in the Polaris cloud region.

Domaines: Astrophysique stellaire et solaire [astro-ph.SR]; Astrophysique stellaire et solaire [astro-ph.SR]

D. Ward-Thompson, J. M. Kirk, P. André, P. Saraceno, P. Didelon, et al.. A Herschel study of the properties of starless cores in the Polaris Flare dark cloud region using PACS and SPIRE. Astronomy and Astrophysics - A&A, 2010, 518, pp.L92. ⟨10.1051/0004-6361/201014618⟩. ⟨hal-00523470⟩