Related papers: Estimation of high-resolution dust column density …
Sub-millimetre dust emission is often used to derive the column density N of dense interstellar clouds. The observations consist of data at several wavelengths but of variable resolution. We examine two procedures that been proposed for the…
With current wide-field near-infrared (NIR) instruments the scattered light in the near-infrared can be mapped over large areas. Below A_V ~ 10 the surface brightness is directly proportional to the column density, and at slightly higher…
This study is aimed to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the molecular hydrogen distribution in the galaxy M33 by introducing novel methods for generating high angular resolution (18.2$''$, equivalent to 75 pc) column…
We use the COMPLETE Survey's observations of the Perseus star-forming region to assess and intercompare three methods for measuring column density in molecular clouds: extinction mapping (NIR); thermal emission mapping (FIR); and mapping…
We present a method of mapping dust column density in dark clouds by using near-infrared scattered light. Our observations of the Lupus 3 dark cloud indicate that there is a well defined relation between (1) the H-Ks color of an individual…
We discuss the possibility of mapping interstellar clouds at unprecedentedly high spatial resolution by means of near-IR imaging of their scattered light. We calculate the scattering of the interstellar radiation field by a cloud model…
We generalize the technique of Lada et al. (1994) to map dust column density through a molecular cloud (NICE) to an optimized multi-band technique (NICER) that can be applied to any multi-band survey of molecular clouds. We present a first…
We present a Bayesian inference method to characterise the dust emission properties using the well-known dust-HI correlation in the diffuse interstellar medium at Planck frequencies $\nu \ge 217$ GHz. We use the Galactic HI map from the…
We have used a numerical simulation of a turbulent cloud to synthesize maps of the thermal emission from dust at a variety of far-IR and sub-mm wavelengths. The average column density and external radiation field in the simulation is well…
Sub-millimetre observations suggest that the filaments of interstellar clouds have rather uniform widths and can be described with the so-called Plummer profiles. The shapes of the filament profiles are linked to their physical state.…
Herschel has revolutionized our ability to measure column densities (N$_{\rm H}$) and temperatures (T) of molecular clouds thanks to its far infrared multiwavelength coverage. However, the lack of a well defined background intensity level…
We have developed a technique to map the three-dimensional structure of the local interstellar medium using a maximum entropy reconstruction technique. A set of column densities N to stars of known distance can in principle be used to…
Infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) are cold and dense reservoirs of gas potentially available to form stars. Many of these clouds are likely to be pristine structures representing the initial conditions for star formation. The study presented…
We consider from a general point of view the problem of determining the extinction in dense molecular clouds. We use a rigorous statistical approach to characterize the properties of the most widely used optical and infrared techniques,…
It has often been suggested that an alternative to the standard CO/21-cm method for estimating the mass of the interstellar medium (ISM) in a galaxy might be to estimate the mass of the ISM from the continuum dust emission. In this paper,…
We present a detailed study of an estimator of the HI column density, based on a combination of HI 21cm absorption and HI 21cm emission spectroscopy. This "isothermal" estimate is given by $N_{\rm HI,ISO} = 1.823 \times 10^{18} \int \left[…
We present a method, based on Bayesian statistics, to fit the dust emission parameters in the far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths. The method estimates the dust temperature and spectral emissivity index, plus their relationship,…
Constraining the physical and chemical evolution of molecular clouds is essential to our understanding of star formation. These investigations often necessitate knowledge of some local representative number density of the gas along the line…
Measuring the mass distribution of infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) over the wide dynamic range of their column densities is a fundamental obstacle in determining the initial conditions of high-mass star formation and star cluster formation. We…
We present a new map of interstellar reddening, covering the 39\% of the sky with low {\rm HI} column densities ($N_{\rm HI} < 4\times10^{20}\,\rm cm^{-2}$ or $E(B-V)\approx 45\rm\, mmag$) at $16\overset{'}{.}1$ resolution, based on all-sky…