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arxiv 1611.04037 v1 pith:AQDCJV2R submitted 2016-11-12 astro-ph.GA

The anatomy of the Orion B Giant Molecular Cloud: A local template for studies of nearby galaxies

classification astro-ph.GA
keywords linedensitymolecularorioncloudmassradiationalmost
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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We aim to develop the Orion B Giant Molecular Cloud (GMC) as a local template for interpreting extra-galactic molecular line observations. We use the wide-band receiver at the IRAM-30m to spatially and spectrally resolve the Orion B GMC. The observations cover almost 1 square degree at 26" resolution with a bandwidth of 32 GHz from 84 to 116 GHz in only two tunings. Among the mapped spectral lines are the 12CO, 13CO, C18O, C17O, HCN, HNC, 12CN, CCH, HCO+, N2H+ (1-0), and 12CS, 32SO, SiO, c-C3H2, CH3OH (2-1) transitions. We introduce the molecular anatomy of the Orion B GMC, including relations between line intensities and gas column density or far-UV radiation fields, and correlations between selected line and line ratios. We also obtain a dust-traced gas mass that is less than about one third the CO-traced mass, using the standard Xco conversion factor. The presence of overluminous CO can be traced back to the dependence of the CO intensity on UV illumination. In fact, while most lines show some dependence on the UV radiation field, CN and CCH are the most sensitive. Moreover dense cloud cores are almost exclusively traced by N2H+. Other traditional high density tracers, such as HCN (1-0), are also easily detected in extended translucent regions at a typical density of about 500 H2 cm-3. In general, we find no straightforward relation between line critical density and the fraction of the line luminosity coming from dense gas regions. Our initial findings demonstrate that the relations between line (ratio) intensities and environment in GMCs are more complicated than often assumed. Sensitivity (i.e., the molecular column density), excitation, and above all chemistry contribute to the observed line intensity distributions. They must be considered together when developing the next generation of extra-galactic molecular line diagnostics of mass, density, temperature and radiation field.

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Cited by 3 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Chemical diversity of dense cores in Orion B: The role of the environment

    astro-ph.GA 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    PCA of 25 molecular lines across 1001 Orion B cores reveals that chemical diversity is driven by column density, the FUV-to-density ratio G0/n, and freeze-out signatures tied to mean density.

  2. B-Fields and Star Formation across Scales with TRAO (B-FROST): CO Abundances, Dynamics and Relative Orientations in the Translucent High Latitude Cloud MBM12

    astro-ph.GA 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Observational study of MBM12 shows CO-to-H2 conversion factor near galactic average with density-dependent variations, high virial parameters decreasing at small scales, broken power-law mass-size relations indicating...

  3. The ${}^{13}\mathrm{CO}(2{-}1)/^{12}\mathrm{CO}(2{-}1)$ Line Ratio from 100 Molecular Clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud

    astro-ph.GA 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Observational study of 100 LMC GMCs finds median 13CO(2-1)/12CO(2-1) line ratio of 0.078, nearly linear with luminosity, and higher in clouds hosting IR-bright young stellar objects.