AAS 201st Meeting, January, 2003
Session 66. Star Formation II
Oral, Tuesday, January 7, 2003, 2:00-3:30pm, 608-609

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[66.05] The BIMA Survey of Embedded Cores in the Perseus Cloud Complex

N.H. Volgenau, L.G. Mundy (U. Maryland), N.J. Evans II (U. Texas), SIRTF c2d Legacy Project Team

We report on results from a survey of 21 embedded cores in the Perseus Molecular Cloud Complex that has been conducted with observations from the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association (BIMA) interferometer. The survey targets were selected from a database of known ammonia cores and included a range of luminosities and masses. The cores were observed in the 2.7mm continuum and the J=1-0 transitions of 13CO and C18O. Three different configurations of the BIMA array were used, allowing the cores to be mapped with resolutions of 10, 5, and 3 arc-seconds. Observations for the survey were concluded in Summer 2002. The maps have typical noise levels of ~1.2 mJy per 5" beam in the continuum. Line emission is detected in all fields; continuum emission from discrete sources is detected in approximately 70% of the fields. We compare the gas and dust emission to the 2MASS source distribution, as well as the distribution of candidate young sources determined from the 2MASS colors.

The BIMA survey is designed to complement the SIRTF Legacy Project ``From Molecular Cores to Planet-Forming Disks,'' which will map four of the nearest large molecular clouds (including Perseus) and 120 known embedded cores. The combined datasets will allow us to investigate many aspects of early stellar evolution, including the distributions of the gas and young stars, the extent of molecular depletion in core environments, and the correlation between velocity structure and the multiplicity of central sources.

This research is supported by NASA grant NAG-510611.


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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34, #4
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.