Browsing by Author "Kyyrö, Paula"

Filamentary structures appear to be very common in molecular clouds which are known to be the birth sites of stars. These interstellar filaments of gas and dust can have a dominant role in star formation. According to the current understanding of star formation, large-scale supersonic MHD turbulence present in the clouds tends to form these narrow elongated structures which are then broken into dense clumps through gravitational instability. The aim of my Master's thesis is to study the formation of stars by first reviewing the classical stability analysis of the most common self-gravitating structures subject to harmonic disturbances, having an emphasis on cylindrical symmetry which can be used to describe the behaviour of filamentary structures. Especially the density distribution, the critical line mass and the stability criterion (Jeans length) for self-gravitating isothermal cylinder are presented. Then the theory is applied to an individual target, a filament known as Taurus Molecular Cloud–1 (TMC–1). The goal is to investigate if the observed structures are in agreement with theoretical models and if stars can be formed in the filament through gravitational instability. By examining the properties of the cloud it is possible to find out when gravity (instead of external pressure) begins to dominate the evolution of the cloud. Important supportive forces, thermal pressure and turbulence, can be studied by observing standard molecular line tracers as ammonia. Ammonia NH3(1,1) and NH3(2,2) inversion lines are measured with the Effelsberg 100-m telescope in order to derive e.g. gas kinetic temperatures and non-thermal velocity dispersions along the TMC–1 filament. Furthermore, supplementing the molecular line data with the data from SCUBA 850 micron dust emission map of the cloud (Nutter et al., 2008) and assuming that the gas kinetic temperature equals to the dust temperature (Tkin = Tdust), hydrogen column densities can be calculated. Moreover, the cross-sectional column density profiles in several places along the filament can be fitted with the classical model of a hydrostatic isothermal cylinder by Stodolkiewicz (1963). The model fits roughly to the cross-sectional column density profiles. The fragment lengths or the projected clump separations along the ‘backbone’ of the filament (longitudinal profile) are derived from the intensity maxima seen in the SCUBA data. The observed fragment lengths along the filament are compared with the Jeans lengths and the fastest growing modes of disturbance predicted from Stodolkiewicz's model in order to investigate the star-forming potential of TMC-1. The observed clump separations are in a rough agreement with the local theoretical Jeans lengths. Moreover, the longitudinal SCUBA intensity profile is expanded into Fourier series, and the wavelengths corresponding to the dominating amplitudes are calculated. These wavelengths are compared with theoretical Jeans lengths in order to investigate if the perturbations travelling in the filament can cause collapse or if they are only ‘sound waves’. Two wavelengths, lambda = 0.23 pc and lambda = 0.30 pc, exceed the local theoretical Jeans length and hence may cause collapse within the filament and trigger star formation in the fragments.