EPoS Contribution
EPoS Contribution
The width of Herschel filaments varies with distance

Gina Panopoulou
Caltech, Pasadena, CA, US
Filamentary structures in molecular clouds appear to have a characteri- stic width in observations of dust emission. In recent years, this re- sult has been called into question due to concerns on biases in the ado- pted measurement methodology. The finding is still debated today, with conflicting evidence for and against the existence of a characteristic width presented in the literature. We explore a previously overlooked uncertainty in the width determination: the distance estimation. We re- vise distance estimates to nearby clouds based on Gaia and examine the distribution of filament widths in individual clouds. We show that fil- ament widths show a significant dependence on the cloud distance, and are incompatible with the idea of a characteristic width.
Caption: Distance dependence of filament widths
Collaborators:
S.E. Clark, Stanford, US
A. Hacar, U. Vienna, AT
F. Heitsch, UNC-Chapel Hill, US
J. Kainulainen, Chalmers, SE
E. Ntormousi, SNS Pisa, IT
D. Seifried, U Cologne, DE
R.J. Smith, U Manchester, UK
Key publication

Suggested Session: Filaments