J/A+A/658/A166 4 star-forming regions 3D dust density (Dharmawardena+, 2022)
Three-dimensional dust density structure of the Orion, Cygnus X, Taurus, and
Perseus star-forming regions.
Dharmawardena T.E., Bailer-Jones C.A.L., Fouesneau M., Foreman-Mackey D.
<Astron. Astrophys. 658, A166 (2022)>
=2022A&A...658A.166D 2022A&A...658A.166D (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Interstellar medium ; Milky Way ; Molecular clouds ; Extinction ;
Star Forming Region
Keywords: methods: numerical - dust, extinction - ISM: clouds - ISM: structure -
local interstellar matter - Galaxy: structure
Abstract:
Interstellar dust affects many astronomical observations through
absorption and reddening, yet this extinction is also a powerful tool
for studying interstellar matter in galaxies. Three-dimensional (3D)
reconstructions of dust extinction and density in the Milky Way have
suffered from artefacts such as the fingers-of-god effect and negative
densities, and have been limited by large computational costs. Here we
aim to overcome these issues with a novel algorithm that derives the
3D extinction density of dust in the MilkyWay using a latent variable
Gaussian process in combination with variational inference. Our model
maintains non-negative density and hence monotonically non-decreasing
extinction along all lines-of-sight, while performing the inference
within a reasonable computational time.
Using extinctions for hundreds of thousands of stars computed from
optical and near-infrared photometry, together with distances based on
Gaia parallaxes, we employ our algorithm to infer the structure of the
Orion, Taurus, Perseus, and Cygnus X star-forming regions. A number of
features that are superimposed in 2D extinction maps are clearly
deblended in 3D dust extinction density maps. For example, we find a
large filament on the edge of Orion that may host a number of star
clusters.We also identify a coherent structure that may link the
Taurus and Perseus regions, and we show that Cygnus X is located at
1300-1500pc, in line with very-long-baseline interferometry
measurements.
We compute dust masses of the regions and find these to be slightly
higher than previous estimates, likely a consequence of our input data
recovering the highest column densities more effectively. By comparing
our predicted extinctions to Planck data, we find that known
relationships between density and dust processing, where
high-extinction lines-of-sight have the most processed grains, hold up
in resolved observations when density is included, and that they exist
at smaller scales than previously suggested. This can be used to study
the changes in size or composition of dust as they are processed in
molecular clouds.
Description:
In this catalogue we present the 3D dust density and extinction for
the star formation regions: Orion, Cygnus X, Perseus and Taurus. The
data cubes are in torch tensor format and can be accessed using
scripts provided in https://github.com/Thavisha/Dustribution. The data
is also interactively available on www.mwdust.com.
File Summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ReadMe 80 . This file
Cygnus/* . 5 Files for Cygnus X
Orion/* . 5 Files for Orion
Perseus/* . 5 Files for Perseus
Taurus/* . 5 Files for Taurus
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Description of file:
Each subdirectory contains 5 files:
gpydensmedian.out : median density cube for each SFR
extmedcube.pkl.npy : median extinction cube for each SFR
lboundspred.pkl.npy : cube of boundaries in Galactic l for each SFR
bboundspred.pkl.npy : cube of boundaries in Galactic b for each SFR
dboundspred.pkl.npy : cube of boundaries in distance along
line-of-sight for each SFR
See also:
https://github.com/Thavisha/Dustribution : Scripts Home Page
www.mwdust.com : Dustribution - 3D dust density and extinction maps of the
Milky Way
Acknowledgements:
Thavisha E. Dharmawardena, dharmawardena(at)mpia.de
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 14-Feb-2022