Related papers: Predicting reliable H$_2$ column density maps from…

CO line emission represents the most accessible and widely used tracer of the molecular interstellar medium. This renders the translation of observed CO intensity into total H2 gas mass critical to understand star formation and the…

We present new analytic theory and radiative transfer computations for the atomic to molecular (HI-to-H2) transitions, and the build-up of atomic-hydrogen (HI) gas columns, in optically thick interstellar clouds, irradiated by…

We made CO(1-0) observations of 103 lines of sight in the core and envelope of the high-latitude cloud MBM 40 to determine how the CO-H_2 conversion factor (X_CO) varies throughout the cloud. Calibrating X_CO with CH data at similar…

Our ability to trace the star-forming molecular gas is important to our understanding of the Universe. We can trace this gas using CO emission, converting the observed CO intensity into the H$_2$ gas mass of the region using the CO-to-H$_2$…

Machine learning techniques have been previously used to model and predict column densities in the TMC-1 dark molecular cloud. In interstellar sources further along the path of star formation, such as those where a protostar itself has been…

Recent submillimeter and far-infrared wavelength observations of absorption in the rotational ground-state lines of various simple molecules against distant Galactic continuum sources have opened the possibility of studying the chemistry of…

[Abridged] Do some environments favor efficient conversion of molecular gas into stars? To answer this, we need to be able to estimate the H2 mass. Traditionally, this is done using CO and a few assumptions but the Herschel observations in…

How does molecular cloud chemistry change with metallicity? In this work, we study the relation between molecular hydrogen ($H_2$) and carbon monoxide (CO) at $1/2$ and $1/5$ solar metallicity using ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy…

The $^{13}$CO molecule is often used as a column density tracer in regions where the $^{12}$CO emission saturates. The $^{13}$CO column density is then related to that of $^{12}$CO by a uniform isotopic ratio. A similar approximation is…

We present newly processed archival Herschel images of molecular cloud MCLD 123.5+24.9 in the Polaris Flare. This cloud contains five starless cores. Using the spectral synthesis code Cloudy, we explore uncertainties in the derivation of…

Observations of the cosmic evolution of different gas phases across time indicate a marked increase in the molecular gas mass density towards $z\sim 2-3$. Such a transformation implies an accompanied change in the global distribution of…

A new method to determine the CO-to-H$_2$ conversion factor $X_{\rm CO}$ using absorption of diffuse X-ray emission by local molecular clouds was developed. It was applied to the Ophiucus (G353+17) and Corona Australis (G359-18) clouds…

We investigate how the X factor, the ratio of H_2 column density (NH2) to velocity-integrated CO intensity (W), is determined by the physical properties of gas in model molecular clouds (MCs). We perform radiative transfer calculations on…

Observations of various molecular lines toward a disk region of a nearby galaxy are now feasible, and they are being employed as diagnostic tools to study star-formation activities there. However, the spatial resolution attainable for a…

Using a source selection biased towards high mass star forming regions, we used a Large Velocity Gradient (LVG) code to calculate the H2 densities and CS column densities for a sample of Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) 8 micron infrared…

We present Herschel PACS observations of the [CII] 158 micron emission line in a sample of 24 intermediate mass (9<logM$_\ast$/M$_\odot$<10) and low metallicity (0.4< Z/Z$_\odot$<1.0) galaxies from the xCOLD GASS survey. Combining them with…

Star formation activity in molecular clouds is often found to be correlated with the amount of material above a column density threshold of $\sim 10^{22} \, {\rm cm^{-2}}$. Attempts to connect this column density threshold to a ${\it…

Column density (N) PDFs serve as a powerful tool to characterize the physical processes that influence the structure of molecular clouds. Star-forming clouds can best be characterized by lognormal PDFs for the lower N range and a power-law…

We examine several different simplified approaches for modelling the chemistry of CO in three-dimensional numerical simulations of turbulent molecular clouds. We compare the different models both by looking at the behaviour of integrated…

We present first results of neutral carbon ([CI], 3P1 - 3P0 at 492 GHz) and carbon monoxide (13CO, J = 1 - 0) mapping in the Vela Molecular Ridge cloud C (VMR-C) and G333 giant molecular cloud complexes with the NANTEN2 and Mopra…