Vera Konyves

We present a catalogue of dense cores and filaments in a 3.8^○ × 2.4^○ field around the TMC1 region of the Taurus Molecular Cloud. The catalogue was created using photometric data from the Herschel SPIRE and PACS instruments in the 70 μm, 160 μm, 250 μm, 350 μm, and 500 μm continuum bands. Extended structure in the region was reconstructed from a Herschel column density map. Power spectra and PDFs of this structure are presented. The PDF splits into log-normal and power-law forms, with the high-density power-law component associated primarily with the central part of TMC1. The total mass in the mapped region is 2000 M_⊙, of which 34% is above an extinction of A_V ∼ 3 mag – a level that appears as a break in the PDF and as the minimum column density at which dense cores are found. A total of 35 dense filaments were extracted from the column density map. These have a characteristic FWHM width of 0.07 pc, but the TMC1 filament itself has a mean FWHM of ∼0.13 pc. The thermally supercritical filaments in the region are aligned orthogonal to the prevailing magnetic field direction. Derived properties for the supercritical TMC1 filament support the scenario of it being relatively young. A catalogue of 44 robust and candidate prestellar cores is created and is assessed to be complete down to 0.1 M_⊙. The combined prestellar CMF for the TMC1 and L1495 regions is well fit by a single log-normal distribution and is comparable to the standard IMF.

We report 850 μm continuum polarization observations toward the filamentary high-mass star-forming region NGC 2264, taken as part of the B-fields In STar forming Regions Observations large program on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. These data reveal a well-structured nonuniform magnetic field in the NGC 2264C and 2264D regions with a prevailing orientation around 30° from north to east. Field strength estimates and a virial analysis of the major clumps indicate that NGC 2264C is globally dominated by gravity, while in 2264D, magnetic, gravitational, and kinetic energies are roughly balanced. We present an analysis scheme that utilizes the locally resolved magnetic field structures, together with the locally measured gravitational vector field and the extracted filamentary network. From this, we infer statistical trends showing that this network consists of two main groups of filaments oriented approximately perpendicular to one another. Additionally, gravity shows one dominating converging direction that is roughly perpendicular to one of the filament orientations, which is suggestive of mass accretion along this direction. Beyond these statistical trends, we identify two types of filaments. The type I filament is perpendicular to the magnetic field with local gravity transitioning from parallel to perpendicular to the magnetic field from the outside to the filament ridge. The type II filament is parallel to the magnetic field and local gravity. We interpret these two types of filaments as originating from the competition between radial collapsing, driven by filament self-gravity, and longitudinal collapsing, driven by the region's global gravity.

We report 850 $μ$m continuum polarization observations toward the filamentary high-mass star-forming region NGC 2264, taken as part of the B-fields In STar forming Regions Observations (BISTRO) large program on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). These data reveal a well-structured non-uniform magnetic field in the NGC 2264C and 2264D regions with a prevailing orientation around 30 deg from north to east. Field strengths estimates and a virial analysis for the major clumps indicate that NGC 2264C is globally dominated by gravity while in 2264D magnetic, gravitational, and kinetic energies are roughly balanced. We present an analysis scheme that utilizes the locally resolved magnetic field structures, together with the locally measured gravitational vector field and the extracted filamentary network. From this, we infer statistical trends showing that this network consists of two main groups of filaments oriented approximately perpendicular to one another. Additionally, gravity shows one dominating converging direction that is roughly perpendicular to one of the filament orientations, which is suggestive of mass accretion along this direction. Beyond these statistical trends, we identify two types of filaments. The type-I filament is perpendicular to the magnetic field with local gravity transitioning from parallel to perpendicular to the magnetic field from the outside to the filament ridge. The type-II filament is parallel to the magnetic field and local gravity. We interpret these two types of filaments as originating from the competition between radial collapsing, driven by filament self-gravity, and the longitudinal collapsing, driven by the region's global gravity.

We present BISTRO Survey 850 μm dust emission polarization observations of the L1495A-B10 region of the Taurus molecular cloud, taken at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). We observe a roughly triangular network of dense filaments. We detect nine of the dense starless cores embedded within these filaments in polarization, finding that the plane-of-sky orientation of the core-scale magnetic field lies roughly perpendicular to the filaments in almost all cases. We also find that the large-scale magnetic field orientation measured by Planck is not correlated with any of the core or filament structures, except in the case of the lowest-density core. We propose a scenario for early prestellar evolution that is both an extension to, and consistent with, previous models, introducing an additional evolutionary transitional stage between field-dominated and matter-dominated evolution, observed here for the first time. In this scenario, the cloud collapses first to a sheet-like structure. Uniquely, we appear to be seeing this sheet almost face on. The sheet fragments into filaments, which in turn form cores. However, the material must reach a certain critical density before the evolution changes from being field dominated to being matter dominated. We measure the sheet surface density and the magnetic field strength at that transition for the first time and show consistency with an analytical prediction that had previously gone untested for over 50 yr.

We study the Hii regions associated with the NGC 6334 molecular cloud observed in the submillimeter and taken as part of the B-fields In STar-forming Region Observations Survey. In particular, we investigate the polarization patterns and magnetic field morphologies associated with these Hii regions. Through polarization pattern and pressure calculation analyses, several of these bubbles indicate that the gas and magnetic field lines have been pushed away from the bubble, toward an almost tangential (to the bubble) magnetic field morphology. In the densest part of NGC 6334, where the magnetic field morphology is similar to an hourglass, the polarization observations do not exhibit observable impact from Hii regions. We detect two nested radial polarization patterns in a bubble to the south of NGC 6334 that correspond to the previously observed bipolar structure in this bubble. Finally, using the results of this study, we present steps (incorporating computer vision; circular Hough transform) that can be used in future studies to identify bubbles that have physically impacted magnetic field lines.

We present the first analysis in NGC 2071-North as a resolved hub–filament featuring a double centre. This ∼1.5 × 1.5 pc2 scale filament hub contains ∼500 M⊙. Seen from Planck, magnetic field lines may have facilitated the gathering of material at this isolated location. The energy balance analysis, supported by infalling gas signatures, reveals that these filaments are currently forming stars. Herschel 100 $\mu$m emission concentrates in the hub, at IRAS 05451+0037 and LkHα 316, and presents diffuse lobes and loops around them. We suggest that such a double centre could be formed, because the converging locations of filament pairs are offset, by 2.3 arcmin (0.27 pc). This distance also matches the diameter of a hub ring, seen in column density and molecular tracers, such as HCO+ (1–0) and HCN (1–0), that may indicate a transition and the connection between the hub and the radiating filaments. We argue that all of the three components of the emission star LkHα 316 are in physical association. We find that a ∼0.06-pc-sized gas loop, attached to IRAS 05451+0037, can be seen at wavelengths all the way from the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS)-i to Herschel 100 $\mu$m. These observations suggest that both protostars at the double hub centre are interacting with the cloud material. In our 13CO data, we do not seem to find the outflow of this region that was identified in the 1980s with much lower resolution.

We present 850 μm dust polarization observations of the massive DR21 filament from the B-fields In STar-forming Region Observations (BISTRO) survey, using the POL-2 polarimeter and the SCUBA-2 camera on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. We detect ordered magnetic fields perpendicular to the parsec-scale ridge of the DR21 main filament. In the subfilaments, the magnetic fields are mainly parallel to the filamentary structures and smoothly connect to the magnetic fields of the main filament. We compare the POL-2 and Planck dust polarization observations to study the magnetic field structures of the DR21 filament on 0.1–10 pc scales. The magnetic fields revealed in the Planck data are well-aligned with those of the POL-2 data, indicating a smooth variation of magnetic fields from large to small scales. The plane-of-sky magnetic field strengths derived from angular dispersion functions of dust polarization are 0.6–1.0 mG in the DR21 filament and ∼0.1 mG in the surrounding ambient gas. The mass-to-flux ratios are found to be magnetically supercritical in the filament and slightly subcritical to nearly critical in the ambient gas. The alignment between column density structures and magnetic fields changes from random alignment in the low-density ambient gas probed by Planck to mostly perpendicular in the high-density main filament probed by James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. The magnetic field structures of the DR21 filament are in agreement with MHD simulations of a strongly magnetized medium, suggesting that magnetic fields play an important role in shaping the DR21 main filament and subfilaments.

We present and analyze observations of polarized dust emission at 850 μm toward the central 1 × 1 pc hub-filament structure of Monoceros R2 (Mon R2). The data are obtained with SCUBA-2/POL-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) as part of the B-fields in Star-forming Region Observations survey. The orientations of the magnetic field follow the spiral structure of Mon R2, which are well described by an axisymmetric magnetic field model. We estimate the turbulent component of the magnetic field using the angle difference between our observations and the best-fit model of the underlying large-scale mean magnetic field. This estimate is used to calculate the magnetic field strength using the Davis–Chandrasekhar–Fermi method, for which we also obtain the distribution of volume density and velocity dispersion using a column density map derived from Herschel data and the C¹⁸O (J = 3 − 2) data taken with HARP on the JCMT, respectively. We make maps of magnetic field strengths and mass-to-flux ratios, finding that magnetic field strengths vary from 0.02 to 3.64 mG with a mean value of 1.0 ± 0.06 mG, and the mean critical mass-to-flux ratio is 0.47 ± 0.02. Additionally, the mean Alfvén Mach number is 0.35 ± 0.01. This suggests that, in Mon R2, the magnetic fields provide resistance against large-scale gravitational collapse, and the magnetic pressure exceeds the turbulent pressure. We also investigate the properties of each filament in Mon R2. Most of the filaments are aligned along the magnetic field direction and are magnetically subcritical.