The Scaleheight of Giant Molecular Clouds is Less than that of Smaller Clouds

Antony A. Stark; Youngung Lee

doi:10.1086/427936

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arXiv · astro-ph/0403631

The Scaleheight of Giant Molecular Clouds is Less than that of Smaller Clouds

Antony A. Stark·Youngung Lee

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Abstract

We have used an antenna temperature thresholding algorithm on the Bell Laboratories 13CO Milky Way Survey to create a catalog of 1,400 molecular clouds. Of these, 281 clouds were selected for having well-determined kinematic distances. The scaleheight, luminosity, internal velocity dispersion, and size of the cloud sample are analyzed to show that clouds smaller than ~200,000 solar masses have a scaleheight which is about 35 pc, roughly independent of cloud mass, while larger clouds, the Giant Molecular Clouds, have a reduced scaleheight which declines with increasing cloud mass.

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Antony A. Stark, Youngung Lee. 2004-03-26. The Scaleheight of Giant Molecular Clouds is Less than that of Smaller Clouds. https://doi.org/10.1086/427936

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