Letter to the Editor

Dust-temperature of an isolated star-forming cloud: Herschel observations of the Bok globule CB244^*

A. Stutz^1,2, R. Launhardt¹, H. Linz¹, O. Krause¹, T. Henning¹, J. Kainulainen¹, M. Nielbock¹, J. Steinacker^3,1 and P. André⁴

¹ Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany e-mail: stutz@mpia.de
² Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
³ LERMA & UMR 8112 du CNRS, Observatoire de Paris, 61 Av. de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France
⁴ Laboratoire AIM, CEA/DSM-CNRS-Université Paris Diderot, IRFU/Service d'Astrophysique, C.E. Saclay, Orme des Merisiers, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France

Received: 29 March 2010
Accepted: 15 April 2010

Abstract

We present Herschel observations of the isolated, low-mass star-forming Bok globule CB244. It contains two cold sources, a low-mass Class 0 protostar and a starless core, which is likely to be prestellar in nature, separated by 90 (~18 000 AU). The Herschel data sample the peak of the Planck spectrum for these sources, and are therefore ideal for dust-temperature and column density modeling. With these data and a near-IR extinction map, the MIPS 70 μm mosaic, the SCUBA 850 μm map, and the IRAM 1.3 mm map, we model the dust-temperature and column density of CB 244 and present the first measured dust-temperature map of an entire star-forming molecular cloud. We find that the column-averaged dust-temperature near the protostar is ~17.7 K, while for the starless core it is ~10.6 K, and that the effect of external heating causes the cloud dust-temperature to rise to ~17 K where the hydrogen column density drops below 10²¹ cm^-2. The total hydrogen mass of CB 244 (assuming a distance of 200 pc) is 15±5 . The mass of the protostellar core is 1.6±0.1  and the mass of the starless core is 5±2 , indicating that ~45% of the mass in the globule is participating in the star-formation process.