Fragmented molecular clouds - Statistical analysis of the (13)CO (J = 1 - 0) emission distribution
M. Perault, E. Falgarone, J. L. Puget;
AaA, 1986, 157, 139
ABSTRACT:A quantitative analysis of the structure of fragmented molecular clouds is attempted through the computation
of the three dimensional (l, b, v) autocorrelation function (ACF) of the
C-13O emission measured in a few nearby complexes.
The necessity of
reducing the data to a small volume of relevant information increases with the
amount of data.
The ACF is a relatively simple representation of part of the
information contained in the data.
The main point is that the reduced quantities
should be direct ingredients to a physical description of the interstellar
medium.
This point is not reached yet here, but that, in the frame of a simplified
analytical model of fragmented clouds, where the total ACF appears as a
superposition of individual scales ACF, an interpretation of the computed ACF is
possible in terms of familiar quantities such as characteristic scales,
filling factors, size/velocity dispersion relation.
The parameters
deduced from these ACF computations are consistent with similar quantities
obtained with a different method.
KEYWORDS: autocorrelation, galactic clusters, interstellar gas, molecular clouds, quantitative analysis, statistical analysis, carbon monoxide, molecular gases, noise measurement, poisson density functions
PERSOKEY:turbulence, ,
CODE: perault86