[PDF] On the Three-dimensional Structure of Local Molecular Clouds | Semantic Scholar
@article{Zucker2021OnTT,
title={On the Three-dimensional Structure of Local Molecular Clouds},
author={Catherine Zucker and Alyssa A. Goodman and Jo{\~a}o Alves and Shmuel Bialy and Eric W. Koch and Joshua S. Speagle and Michael M. Foley and Douglas P. Finkbeiner and Reimar H. Leike and Torsten A. Ensslin and Joshua E. G. Peek and Gordian Edenhofer},
journal={The Astrophysical Journal},
year={2021},
volume={919},
url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:237581260}
}We leverage the 1 pc spatial resolution of the Leike et al. three-dimensional (3D) dust map to characterize the 3D structure of nearby molecular clouds (d ≲ 400 pc). We start by “skeletonizing” the clouds in 3D volume density space to determine their “spines,” which we project on the sky to constrain cloud distances with ≈1% uncertainty. For each cloud, we determine an average radial volume density profile around its 3D spine and fit the profiles using Gaussian and Plummer functions. The radial…