Results from the PROMISE survey: Do molecular cloud density distributions REALLY care about turbulence? Jouni Kainulainen Chalmers, Gothenburg, SE
I present highlights from the PROMISE galactic plane survey. PROMISE is a dust extinction mapping survey that provides high-resolution (FWHM=2”), high-sensitivity column density maps for thousands of molecular clouds in the Galactic plane, covering a statistically interesting volume of the Milky Way. I will showcase the first survey data products and present the first results emerging from the data. Specifically, I address the question of the relationship between the density structure and turbulence energy in molecular clouds; the relationship is a fundamental prediction of the turbulence-regulated interstellar medium and the PROMISE data open a door to address it at Galactic scales.
Caption: Details from the PROMISE extinction mapping project. Top: Virtually uncharted complex of dark clouds around l=345, b=1.5, at the distance of 1.8 kpc (courtesy, M. Zhang). Bottom: High-resolution (2”) extinction map of an Orion-like GMC, G357, at the distance of 3.5 kpc.
Collaborators: M. Zhang, MPIA, DE M. Riener, MPIA, DE	Suggested Session: Molecular Clouds