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An observational study of GMCs in the Magellanic Clouds with the ASTE telescope

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

Tetsuhiro Minamidani
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Hokkaido UniversityN10W8, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-0810, Japan email: tetsu@astro1.sci.hokudai.ac.jp
Norikazu Mizuno
Affiliation:
Department of Astrophysics, Nagoya University Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8602, Japan
Yoji Mizuno
Affiliation:
Department of Astrophysics, Nagoya University Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8602, Japan
Akiko Kawamura
Affiliation:
Department of Astrophysics, Nagoya University Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8602, Japan
Toshikazu Onishi
Affiliation:
Department of Astrophysics, Nagoya University Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8602, Japan
Ken'ichi Tatematsu
Affiliation:
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan
Tetsuo Hasegawa
Affiliation:
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan
Masafumi Ikeda
Affiliation:
Research Center for the Early Universe and Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
Yasuo Fukui
Affiliation:
Department of Astrophysics, Nagoya University Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8602, Japan
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Abstract

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We report the results of the submillimeter observations with the ASTE 10 m telescope toward the giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in the Magellanic Clouds to reveal the physical properties of dense molecular gas, the principle sites of star and cluster formation. Six GMCs in the Large Magellanic Cloud have been mapped in the 12CO(J = 3 − 2) transition and 32 clumps are identified in these GMCs at a resolution of 5 pc. These data are combined with 12CO(J = 1 − 0) and 13CO(J = 1 − 0) results and compared with LVG calculations to derive the density and temperature of clumps. The derived density and temperature are distributed in wide ranges. We have made small mapping observations in the 13CO(J = 3 − 2) transition toward 9 representative peak positions of clumps to determine the density and temperature of clumps. These physical properties are constrained well and there are differences in density and temperature among clumps. We suggest that these differences of clump properties represent an evolutionary sequence of GMCs in terms of density increase leading to star formation.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2009

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