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K. R. Covey (Carleton College), E. F. Ladd (Bucknell University)
We present observations and analysis of the C18O J = 1--0 emission from the I04181 star forming region in the Taurus Molecular Cloud. We imaged a 4' x 5' (0.17 x 0.20 pc) region with 46" resolution using the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory 14 m telescope. This region contains 4.2 ±0.4 solar masses of dense gas distributed over ~1.5 km s-1 in LSR velocity. Individual spectra do not have gaussian velocity profiles, but instead have multiple emission peaks at different velocities, indicating that the emission comes from distinct substructures along the line of sight. A comparison between adjacent spectra shows that these substructures are large compared to the telescope's beam, and that all of the observed emission can be attributed to a small number of structures. We have sucessfully modelled the three dimensional emission structure (two space and one velocity) in this region with only nine gaussian components. The structures identified have typical FWHM size of 0.05 pc and FWHM line width of 0.39 km s-1. Seven of the structures appear to be thermally dominated in that the nonthermal component of their FWHM line widths is smaller than the thermal line width of H2 at a temperature of 10 K.
Two gaussian components appear to be spatially associated with the two forming stars in the region; these components also have LSR velocities which match those of HC3N J = 4--3 observations toward these forming stars made with the NEROC Haystack Observatory 37 m telescope.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: coveyk@carleton.edu