Galactic cold cores

Abstract

AbstractThe project Galactic Cold Cores is studying the early stages of Galactic star formation using far-infrared and sub-millimetre observations of dust emission. The Planck satellite has located many sources of cold dust emission that are likely to be pre-stellar clumps in interstellar clouds. We have mapped a sample of Planck-detected clumps with the Herschel satellite at wavelengths 100-500 μm. Herschel has confirmed the Planck detections of cold dust and have revealed a significant amount of sub-structure in the clumps. The cloud cores have colour temperatures in the range of 10–15 K. However, star formation is often already in progress with cold clumps coinciding with mid-infrared point sources. In less than half of the cases, the cloud morphology is clearly dominated by filamentary structures. The sources include both nearby isolated globules and more distant, massive clouds that may be off-the-plane counterparts of infrared dark clouds.The Herschel observations have been completed and the processed maps will be released to the community in 2013.