Core mass function: a comparison study between Orion A and other massive filamentary clouds.

Abstract

AbstractAs a giant compact filamentary cloud, Orion A has a similar morphology with those more distant filaments in infrared dark clouds as revealed in Herschel surveys. We compared their core mass functions and found a similar power law index of N(>m)∝ m−1.0 for the high-mass end, which may possibly indicates a common case for massive filamentary clouds. We also show that the measured mass function for a certain cloud would largely depend on its distance, thus call for caution in interpreting individual measurements of CMF.