To prepare for the unprecedented spatial and spectral resolution provided by ALMA and Herschel/HIFI, chemical models are being benchmarked against each other. It is obvious that chemical models also need well-constrained observations that can serve as references. Photo-dissociation regions (PDRs) are particularly well suited to serve as references because they make the link between diffuse and molecular clouds, thus enabling astronomers to probe a large variety of physical and chemical processes. At a distance of 400 pc (1" corresponding to 0.002 pc), the Horsehead PDR is very close to the prototypical kind of source (i.e. 1D, edge-on) needed to serve as a reference to models.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0612588,
title = {Benchmarking PDR models against the Horsehead edge},
author = {Jérôme Pety and Javier R. Goicoechea and Maryvonne Gerin and Pierre Hily-Blant and David Teyssier and Evelyne Roueff and Emilie Habart and Alain Abergel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0612588},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
4 pages, 2 PostScript figures. To appear in the proceedings of "SF2A-2006: Semaine de l'Astrophysique Francaise", SF2A, 2006 (D. Barret, F. Casoli, T. Contini, G. Lagache, A. Lecavelier, and L. Pagani eds). Uses LaTeX2e