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Session 7 - Molecular Clouds.
Display session, Wednesday, January 07
Exhibit Hall,
In the past year we have mapped the polarization of thermal emission at 350 \micron\ of 12 galactic molecular clouds with the University of Chicago's array polarimeter Hertz (Schleuning et al 1997, Dowell et al 1997) at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory. Polarimetry of thermal emission is proving to be a powerful method to investigate magnetic fields (eg Schleuning 1997, Dotson 1996) and dust properties (eg Hildebrand amp; Dragovan 1995) in molecular clouds. Here we will present polarization maps of the observed sources which include 3 galactic center clouds (the dust ring, M-0.13-0.08, M-0.02-0.07) and several high mass star formation regions (SgrB2, M17, DR21 and NGC 2024). In the elongated clouds DR21 and NGC 2024, the magnetic field is perpendicular to the cloud along its length. In the DR21 Main region, we resolve an apparent hourglass field geometry. We will also briefly discuss global trends observed in the data set.
