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K. L. Thomas (Mount Union College), E. F. Ladd (Bucknell University), T. Wong (Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO), N. Mizuno, A. Mizuno (Nagoya University), T. L. Bourke (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), C. M. Wright (University of New South Wales)
We present N2H+ (J arrow 1-0) maps of the dense gas surrounding three active star formation regions in the Chamaeleon I and II dark cloud complexes. In each region, we find 1-5 M\odot of quiescent dense gas organized in clumps or groups of connected clumps, with a typical size of 0.05 pc. In one region (CHA-Ia), a deeply embedded forming star is located at the center of the N2H+ core, while in the other two regions, the forming stars and dense cores are not as precisely aligned. The small measured line widths (\Delta VFWHM ~0.4 km s-1) and low excitation temperatures inferred from the N2H+ emission indicate that the star formation activity has not injected substantial kinetic energy into the core material, and therefore we conclude that these dense cores are attractive sites for continued and future star formation. We also present 12CO (J arrow 1-0) maps toward each of these regions, and identify low-velocity bipolar outflows from two of the three regions. We identify the deeply embedded source CHA-MMS1 as the driving source of the outflow in the CHA-Ia region, and suggest that this source may also be responsible for the Herbig-Haro objects HH 49-50 and possibly HH 51. This research was supported by grants PHY0097424 and AST037530 from the US National Science Foundation.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.