- Details
- Published on 01 March 2012
Vol. 539
In section 6. Interstellar and circumstellar matter
The Carina Flare. What can fragments in the wall tell us?

The initial mass function for stars and the mass distribution of structures in the parent molecular clouds are a fundamental problem of star formation. The authors present a new algorithm, DENDROFIND, that hierarchically identifies and classifies localized molecular line emission sites in a data cube using the brightness temperature of the emission in a non-parametric fashion. Extensive tests are described and the details of the algorithm are presented. The authors demonstrate the efficiency of the method using NANTEN, APEX 12CO, and 13CO data and determine the optical depths, column densities. The stability of the embedded clumps and filaments are also studied.