Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Zucker, Catherine
• Speagle, Joshua S.
• Schlafly, Edward F.
• Green, Gregory M.
• Finkbeiner, Douglas P.
• Goodman, Alyssa
• Alves, João

Titel

A compendium of distances to molecular clouds in the Star Formation Handbook

Ist Teil von

• Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin), 2020-01, Vol.633, p.A51

Ort / Verlag

Heidelberg: EDP Sciences

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Accurate distances to local molecular clouds are critical for understanding the star and planet formation process, yet distance measurements are often obtained inhomogeneously on a cloud-by-cloud basis. We have recently developed a method that combines stellar photometric data with Gaia DR2 parallax measurements in a Bayesian framework to infer the distances of nearby dust clouds to a typical accuracy of ∼5%. After refining the technique to target lower latitudes and incorporating deep optical data from DECam in the southern Galactic plane, we have derived a catalog of distances to molecular clouds in Reipurth (2008, Star Formation Handbook, Vols. I and II) which contains a large fraction of the molecular material in the solar neighborhood. Comparison with distances derived from maser parallax measurements towards the same clouds shows our method produces consistent distances with ≲10% scatter for clouds across our entire distance spectrum (150 pc−2.5 kpc). We hope this catalog of homogeneous distances will serve as a baseline for future work.