H13CO+and CH3OH Line Observations of Prestellar Dense Cores in the TMC‐1C Region

Abstract

We have mapped the entire TMC-1C region in the H13CO+ (J = 1-0) and CH3OH (JK = 20-10A+) lines at a grid spacing of 50'' with the 45 m telescope at Nobeyama Radio Observatory. We have also conducted high spatial resolution mapping observations of the TMC-1C region at a grid spacing of 34'' in both lines toward a 6' × 6' portion in the south and a 4' × 4' portion in the north. We found that the structure of TMC-1C is filamentary in both molecular lines. The size and position angle of the filament are 0.75 pc × 0.17 pc and 135°, respectively. The filament consists of dense (~105 cm-3) cores which are traced by either H13CO+ or CH3OH lines. We found that the distribution of cores seen in H13CO+ is quite different from the distribution of cores seen in CH3OH. The large velocity gradient analyses indicate that this difference is a result of the relative abundance variation between H13CO+ and CH3OH in the cores by about 1 order of magnitude. We have also carried out multitransitional observations of C3H2 (JK',K'' = 21,2-10,1 and 31,2-30,3) at two positions in the same cloud in order to estimate the molecular hydrogen densities for H13CO+ and CH3OH cores and found that the densities are around 105 cm-3 for both cores. These starless cores (no IRAS source), considered to be prestellar cores, seem to be at chemically different evolutionary stages; the H13CO+ cores are more evolved and closer to protostar formation than CH3OH cores. On the other hand, we found no difference in physical properties, i.e., the size, line width, and mass, between H13CO+ and CH3OH cores; the averages are about 0.07 pc, 0.3 km s-1, and 2 M☉, respectively.